In 2018, a Pablo Picasso exhibition took place in Tate Modern, London. The exhibition has become one of the most significant cultural events in the capital of England and attracted many visitors and admirers of the great artist`s talent. The exhibition impressed me a lot, I came back again and again to those halls that I had already visited and looked at my favorite paintings.
It was allowed to take pictures of paintings, and I did. Hence, today I want to show you these paintings as well as tell you about Picasso`s work and life from 1930 to 1932 as the exhibition was dedicated to this period of his work.
Picasso's work had lasted for almost a century and had undergone fundamental changes several times. Each new period was a new style, new art, new perception of life, new mood. In a way, every time it was a new Picasso. It is not surprising that in each new period of his life he had a new woman who inspired him.
So, at the beginning of 1930, Picasso was 50 years old, he was a successful artist, his works were exhibited in the best galleries of Europe and America. He had a mansion in the center of Paris and a country house in Northern France, in Normandy. He was happily married, rich and had a long-awaited son.
Portrait Of Olga
Picasso was married to Olga Khokhlova, a Russian ballerina. Olga was ten years younger than Pablo. Picasso met her in Italy, while decorating sets and costumes for the famous Russian Ballet Perfomances, and she danced in the Diaghilev troupe. She wasn't a prima ballerina, but she was charming, and Picasso fell in love. He was very happy, proud of his sophisticated Russian wife, and indulged any of her whims. In the mansion in the center of Paris, Olga arranged receptions, and life was easy and beautiful as ever.
Portrait of the son of Picasso
And then, a life-changing event happened in his life. He meet Marie-Thérèse Walter. This was an accidental meeting, an elderly artist fell in love with a beautiful young seventeen-year-old girl, seeing her on the street.
"I'm Picasso!" he declared, "we must be together, and great future awaits us!" However, the girl was very far from art, and had never heard his name. Then, he showed her a book about him in a shop window, he had a cute smile and a nice tie, and she agreed to pose for him. Almost immediately they became lovers, and Picasso was very happy with his young, passionate, obedient and tender lover. Her plastic young body was praised in many masterpieces of that period, he created many paintings and graphic series full of sensuality and eroticism.
Passion for the young beauty did not only demolished an established way of life of the artist, but lead to divorce with his wife, and also changed his artistic styles, so a period of Surrealism began.
But all of that did not happen at once, the artist had been trying to choose one of the two women and could not. The London exhibition was dedicated to this difficult period in his life. In the pictures below you can see double-faced women. The artist seemed to be trying to regain the harmony in life and loving two women. Unfortunately, this was impossible. Olga Khokhlova began spending less and less time with Picasso and practically lived separately from him in the mansion in Paris. Picasso and a young mistress lived in the estate in Normandy and spent summer in Provence. Finally, the relationship of the artist and his wife ended up after Maria-Thérèse had given birth to Picasso's daughter.