fiftieth anniversary of Picasso’s death | Picasso and the Woman: The Abuse He “Shuns” on the Anniversary of His Death

“If you are They run on the floor of hair and put out cigarettes on your skinThey lock you in your house or threaten to throw you into the Seine, all of that Attacks committed by Picasso Against their women, they mistreat you, there is no doubt about that,” asserts art historian Eugenia Tenenbaum. You don’t have to wonder why they didn’t abandon you, but why He systematically abused his partnersfriends and children, ”he noted before one of the discussions that the anniversary was born, on April 8, the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973).

Among the many events and exhibitions around the world on the occasion of the celebration, only one, at the Brooklyn Museum in New York, in June, You will pay attention to the husbands of the great artist. Among the new writings is Tennenbaum’s The Women Behind Picasso (Lonerg), in which gender expert Jacqueline Roque, Fernandy Olivier, Eva Joel, Olga Khokhlova, Françoise Gilot, Marie-Thérèse Walter, and Dora Maar vindicate her. and Genevieve Laporte, recalling the various degrees of violence – physical, psychological, economic and indirect – that they suffered from the Guernica painter.

The Galician author laments that before the memory, “this continues, as always, to be ignored, belittled or justified. It is not confronted, it is avoided”. “Now that records of complaints, assaults and killings due to gender-based violence have been broken, It is the responsibility of the museum and the artistic discourse to educate about change and equality, But museums and institutions refuse to be part of this necessary social change for decades.”

To reduce the role of the eight women to mere artists is a lack of truth”, says Tenenbaum, who highlights the “overflowing talent” of some of the painters, photographers, dancers and writers who were overshadowed by Picasso. In the book, with illustrations, among others, Maria Hesse, Esther Geli, Lady Dezidia, Maria Herreros and Sarah Herrans come close Picasso pairs through fictional texts and brief biographies, supported by a substantial bibliography.

“We’ve heard they were mentally ‘fragile’, hysterical, melancholic, emasculated and demanding… But when you review the primary sources from another perspective and investigate new ones, you discover that this is how Picasso and his biographers spoke of them, not how they really were or how they spoke of themselves, as the author of The Troubled Look points out.

“More than condemning the artist, the important thing is to contextualize and paraphrase him – points to the historian. Do not separate the work from the person who created it. This separation only arises when speaking of violence against women or any other kind. At auctions or exhibitions it is not dismissed because the market value of the work depends on it. He only dismisses, or pretends to do so, when it is necessary for these men to continue to generate income in spite of being aggressors, abusers, or manipulators. WhatDid Woody Allen, Roman Polanski or Placido Domingo stop being untouched? no“.

Under these lines, the heroes of Tenenbaum’s book:

Eight women in the shadow of the great artist

Fernande Oliver (1881-1966)

Born Amelie Lang, in 1881 in Paris, abandoned by her parents in the hands of her uncles, with whom she suffered abuse and abuse, she fled from the fire only to fall into the embers after being kidnapped and abused by whoever would have her. Abusive Husband, Paul – Emile Percheron. She ran away, but lived with a sculptor who was a pedophile before she met Picasso in 1905, when she was twenty-two. She broke up with him in 1912 because of the mad jealousy of the painter, who He even locked her in his office, did not let her go out on her own and forbade her to work for others. But also because of a lack of care, because two years ago, on a trip to Catalonia, Fernandy had a serious kidney infection. She died in 1966, at the age of 84, alone, ill and penniless, after publishing several memoirs, including When Picasso Was a Fireman. (portrait by Picasso)

Eva Joel (1885-1915)

Many unknowns still surround the short life of the muse and wife to whom Picasso dedicated his “Ma Jolie” series. Eva Gouel changed her name to Marcelle Humbert and in 1910 she met Fernande Olivier when she was with Picasso. for two years They kept a secret love triangle Until Olivier walked away himself and Joel quit his job to devote himself to the artist. In 1913 she fell seriously ill. There is no consensus that he has tuberculosis, throat or breast cancer. Coinciding with the First World War, her condition worsened and he asked her to marry him, a proposal which she accepted. He died in 1915 at the age of 30. Tennenbaum points out She knew there were other women For the traces of make-up on her clothes or the trace of some other perfume on Picasso’s skin, but she felt no malice, but only gratitude, and did not blame him for anything. (Illustration by Lady Dissidia)

Olga Khokhlova (1891-1955)

An aristocrat born in present-day Ukraine in 1891, Olga Khokhlova was a famous dancer with the Russian Ballet that toured Europe and the United States. She met Picasso in Rome in 1917. They married a year later, and soon after, an injury took her off the stage. During the Bolshevik Revolution, he lost all contact with his family in Russia, to whom he later sent money from Paris to help them survive. In 1921 his firstborn, Paolo, was born. The marriage fell into crisis in 1925, at a time when Olga was worried about the health of her mother, who died in 1927 without ever seeing her again. He discovered that young Marie-Thérèse Walter was expecting a child with a Malaga painter who dynamited the marriage, despite Olga’s refusal to sign the divorce and his refusal to divide the assets. Not much is known about her life after that, except that she died alone in 1952 of cancer.

Marie Therese Walter (1909-1977)

She was 17 and he was 45. When they met in January 1927 at Galeries Lafayette. In June they began a relationship that he kept secret for ten years. Firstly, because she was a minor, and secondly, because he was still married to Olga Khokhlova and could be used as an aggravating factor in the divorce proceedings. Marie-Thérèse copied the work of the man from Malaga between 1928 and 1935: 222 pieces bear his name, and two of his paintings—”The Dream” and “Nude, Green Leaves and Bust”—are among the ten most expensive works of art.. In an interview, she herself referred to the artist’s “sadomasochistic practices, to which she expected complete submission and would punish her if she did not understand them”, Get burned skin by cigarettes. They lived together for only two months after the birth of their daughter Maya (who died the previous December) in 1935. Two years later, the relationship cooled, although they maintained correspondence until 1970, when French law compelled the artist to pay him a pension. Mother and daughter were forbidden to go to the painter’s funeral in 1973. Four years later, Marie-Thérèse hanged herself. He was 68 years old.

Dora Maar (1907-1997)

Famous surrealist photographer, painter and sculptorHailed by Cartier-Bresson, and an anti-fascist in the left-wing currents of Paris in the 1930s, Dora met Mar Picasso in January 1936 at Les Deux Magots café, and began a decade-long relationship. When the Spanish Republic commissioned him for the pavilion for that year’s World’s Fair, Maar persuaded him to dedicate him to the bombing of Guernica, While she was filming the whole process. The Nazi occupation plunged her into a state of anxiety, nervous breakdowns, and depression, exacerbated by German raids, the sudden death of her mother while talking to her on the phone, and the painter’s infidelities. this He abused her both mentally and physically, to the point of leaving her unconscious, and had her admitted to a psychiatric hospital where he was electrocuted. Until the poet and friend Paul Eluard got her out of there. Since then, she broke away from the surrealist circle and with Picasso, devoting herself to painting and photography. She died in 1997, at the age of 89, forgotten and unknown. (illustration by Maria Herreros)

Françoise Gilot (1921)

Born in 1921, Françoise Gilot was educated and surrounded by progressive values ​​devoid of gender bias, especially thanks to her mother and maternal grandmother, and developed artistic inclinations. She was 22 when she met the 62-year-old Picasso at Le Catalan in 1943, and they soon began a relationship that lasted until 1955. He signed his works as F. Gilot, To avoid prejudice against female artists. During the Nazi occupation of Paris, he collaborated with the resistance Like a courier on a bicycle, dressed in the colors of the French flag. She was the only one of his women, says Tenenbaum, who knew how to stand up to the manipulations and insults of a Malaga man. She was his close collaborator, helping him in his workshop, but also taking care of the housework. His name is in 183 works by Picasso. Their son Claude was born in 1947, and Paloma in 1949. Their relationship deteriorated, and she decided to leave him in 1953. Two years later, she married an old friend. The painter reacted by making an effort Vicarious Violence: While Gilot was on their honeymoon, he refused to take Paloma, very ill with appendicitis, to the doctor, ransacked the house they shared and threatened to boycott her artistic career, assuring her that she was “done”. Today, she is 101 years old, she is a famous artist and writer. (Illustration by Ana Santos)

Genevieve Laporte (1926-2012)

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There are many gaps in the biography of poet Genevieve Laporte, who was born in 1926 and died in 2012, at the age of 85. At the age of 17 in 1944 he interviewed Picasso who took 50 years from him, for the school newspaper. The relationship, which began as platonic, lasted until 1953, after which it remained a bond of close friendship. Her two-year story, known only to a small inner circle, was not made public until she was seventy, when she revealed it herself in her memoirs. In 1951 she signed a solo contract as an actress, and in 1954 she published her first collection of poems, one of which -La Sublime Porte des songes- was awarded by the French Academy in 1999. In 2005, Twenty of Picasso’s drawings were sold at auctionMillionaire achiever.

Jacqueline Rooke (1926-1986)

It is Madame Z in the first works that Picasso dedicated to her – 400 in total, 311 to her name – in reference to Le Zique, the area on the Côte d’Azur where they met in 1953, in the workshop of Madura, where she worked as a saleswoman. She was 27 and he was 72.. Jacqueline Roque separated from her husband and the father of her only daughter after his infidelities. Françoise Gilot left the painter and courted Roque for six months until she agreed, beginning a 20-year relationship. In 1961 they secretly married, and she devoted herself to the artist: she worked at His secretary, his nurse, his chauffeur, his assistant, his model, his confidanteHowever, the daughters of the painter and part of his entourage accused her of isolating him from the world, and in 1966 he sponsored the largest exhibition of Picasso so far in Paris, but his dedication caused him insomnia and chronic fatigue before leaving. She falls prey to alcohol and sleeping pills At his death, he devoted himself to publishing his work and acting as an agent. In 1986, at the age of 60, he shot himself.