Pablo Picasso

Marie-Thérèse Walter was a pivotal muse and lover for Picasso, whose presence profoundly influenced his art throughout the 1930s. In 1927, while already married to his first wife, ballet dancer Olga Khokhlova, Picasso had begun a secret affair with Marie-Thérèse shortly after they met. Her likeness pervades throughout much of the Vollard Suite (1930-1937), as their illicit relationship inspired a new phase of vitality in his work. In many of the works in the Vollard Suite depicting Marie-Thérèse and Picasso’s alter ego, the Minotaur, the tone is sensual and erotically charged.

 Minotaure aveugle guidé par une fillette III (1934/1939) depicts an altogether different mood, as a blind and defenceless Minotaur is guided by a young girl. Marie-Thérèse’s distinctive features are overt, and her demeanour is symbolic of her serene nature. In this scene, she is depicted as composed, largely in keeping with many of Picasso’s paintings of her during this period. The powerful Minotaur here becomes blind and helpless, led by Marie-Thérèse who is carrying a dove; the universal emblem of peace, and a motif that was prevalent in Picasso’s work. Made at a time when his marriage to Olga was at its most strained, the work is a study of vulnerability and humanity, which elevates Marie-Thérèse as his muse and protector, albeit in the secrecy of his private life. There is a correlation between the Minotaur and Oedipus, the mythical king who blinded himself out of remorse when he learned that he had fulfilled the prophecy that brought tragedy to his family. Picasso’s blind Minotaur works are rife with symbols of guilt, desire and impotence. Curiously, this etching was made just weeks before Marie-Thérèse Walter announced to him, on Christmas Eve 1934, that she was pregnant with their daughter, Maya.

Françoise Gilot, a prolific artist and Picasso’s partner from 1943 to 1953, was central to his post-war reinvention of graphic art, particularly his groundbreaking experiments with lithography. From 1945 onwards, he worked and reworked images of her, transforming her face into a site of restless experimentation as the basis for an intense dialogue between artist and muse. Unlike many of his earlier works drawn directly from life, Picasso’s pictures of Gilot were curiously made from memory, allowing him to freely fragment and reconfigure her features. As art historian Michael Fitzgerald notes, few of these works reproduce her likeness naturalistically; instead, they reflect an artist enthralled by the process of making portraits.

 Across the series of lithographs from 1945 to 1948, Gilot’s steady frontal gaze became a constant through which Picasso tested the expressive limits of the medium. Tête de jeune fille 1 (1945) provides an early example of this experimentation. Made on 7 November 1945, this was the first state of ten, forming an elegant depiction of Gilot with an elongated neck and face, and long, flowing hair. Two days later, Picasso scraped the stone and created the second state. Over the next three months he continued this process, subtly altering Gilot’s features with each state, widening her face and neck, until on the 19 February 1946, he made Tête de jeune fille 10, the tenth state from the lithographic stone. By printing each state, Picasso effectively documented the unfolding of his creative process, something which became increasingly important to him. Printmaking, he noted, allowed him to preserve each stage of the process, which was impossible in painting, where these traces ‘disappear in the course of the work.’

 Upon seeing these portraits, Gilot herself remarked, ‘Now in the proofs of the lithographs he showed me, I saw evidence that I had been very much on his mind. Most of the things he had been doing were, in one way or another, portraits of me.’ These portraits attest to the intensity of Picasso’s engagement with Gilot’s likeness. He continued making works of her towards the end of their relationship and even afterwards. By September 1953, after a tense few years, Gilot departed with their two children, Claude and Paloma, becoming the only woman in Picasso’s life to leave him.

Jacqueline Roque, whom Picasso met in 1952 and married in 1961, became his final muse and the defining presence of his late career. Picasso was captivated by her quiet composure and striking features which he recognised from Delacroix’s Femmes d’Alger (1834), even declaring to Pierre Daix that ‘Delacroix had already met Jacqueline.’ After years of personal, emotional and artistic upheaval, she brought stability as Picasso’s guardian in later life, largely shielding him from visitors at their home in Mougins after the couple moved there in 1961. Under Jacqueline’s protection, Picasso’s furious artistic output amplified. Beginning in the mid-1950s, his portrayals of Jacqueline grew in number and intensity, surpassing that of any other woman in his oeuvre. Frequently shown in profile or repose, she embodied both serenity and devotion. These qualities anchored Picasso’s outlook in his final decade, which was increasingly introspective and nostalgic as he considered the legacy he wished to leave.

 By the early 1960s, Jacqueline dominated his graphic work, particularly in his new-found appreciation for linocuts, a medium with the immediacy and flexibility that suited his restless energy. In Femme nue assise/Nu assis (1962), he reimagined her through the bold, carved lines and earthy terracotta tones characteristic of his linocuts from this period. This strengthened and assured figure, defined by contours and graphic sculptural lines, evokes Picasso’s adoration for the timeless sensuality of classical archetypes, depicting Jacqueline as a nonchalant and seductive nude, recalling Ingres’ Odalisque figures.

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