Art-O-Gram: Picasso-the artist, life and love-scene 3

Picasso's life and his loved ones - especially in relation to Picasso's relationship with and to women an endless topic, on which serious artists and excited feminists, outraged petty bourgeois and imaginative cookbook authors, confused social scientists and envious boulevard journalists from probably every conceivable viewing angle.

The artist lifestyle and his relationships with women have already been dissected thoroughly enough, and it is probably not that important who shares why and which bed. Nevertheless, a overall view of Picasso does not quite avoid taking a look at his lifestyle and love - both are puzzle parts of the "People Picassos", both also influenced his art.

Therefore, a sketch in 7 scenes follows the private side of the artist - an intensely lived life.

Scene 3: The search for a companion leaves traces in many paintings in Picassos

1905 - 1912/13: Fernande Olivier and the "head of a woman"

Fernand Olivier was Picasso's companion from 1905 to 1912 after the majority. Only she itself speaks of nine years in her publications, 1905 to 1913.

In any case, Picasso made over 60 portraits in these eight to nine years, for the Fernand Olivier the model. have designed one of the women's fundamentally important women in his famous "Demoiselles d'Avignon"

The work "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon", which was unveiled by Pablo Picasso in 1907, whose topic, inspired by a brothel, was as unconventional as his previously strange style, revolutionized art history and represents an important milestone in the history of modern art .

Already his study "Female Head" for this epochal masterpiece from the same year testified by the mask -like portrait presentation that Picasso created again. With strong stroke trains and strong color accents, he modeled the female face in the direct preliminary study for the crouching figure in the painting "Les demoiselles d'Avignon" . Inspired by African sculptures, Picasso breaks with all previous conventions of art and designs the first form of a new visual language in a single huge departure.

Les demoiselles d'Avignon is an explicit brothel scene that represents five prostitutes in a compressed room. The work originally showed two male characters among the prostitutes, who were finally excluded. As a result, the viewer is confronted with the sexually charged files that surround the phallic still life of the foreground.

Picasso worked on the painting in two phases, and the resulting stylistic contrasts contribute to the power of the work. Picasso was the only western artist of his time who Iberian art styles in his work. This influence is shown in the two central figures of the painting, the simplified facial features, large eyes and large ears have a direct resemblance to Iberian heads.

African art styles influenced the creation of the two figures on the right; These acts are absolutely unprecedented in western art. The inconsistent viewpoints and broken geometric forms used in these figures announce the arrival of cubism .

Picasso's controversial and powerful painting broke with all traditional ideas of ideal beauty from the 19th century and initiated the new artistic movement of Cubism. The destruction of the European ideal of beauty by strange deformations falls into a time of private tensions with his partner Fernande Fernand Olivier, who led to temporary separation in mid -September 1907.

Incidentally, Picasso dealt intensively with files in the time when LES was painted in the Demoiselles d'Avignon. In the art of the 19th century, prostitutes played an important role because they were considered subversive and annoying for social and sexual status quo.

Picasso's awareness of this topic must be remembered when examining this work. His stormy relationship with Fernande Olivier or the tensions mentioned in it certainly influenced the piece.

Furthermore, among the portraits of Fernande Olivier are the cubist "Portrait of Fernande" from 1909 and the famous sculpture "Head of a Woman (Fernande)" from 1909/10.

The contradicting times about the relationship already indicate the tragic end of this love story. Fernand Olivier was born as Amélie Lang, created from an illegitimate relationship with her mother to a married man; She was raised by an aunt instead of her mother who tried to arrange a marriage for her.

Fernande/Amélie preferred to tore out and was not very lucky with men in the period that followed, she got a child at 17, probably organized by rape, the aunt's family is said to have forced her to get married more rapists instead of standing.

There is also talk of a relationship with a sculptor through which she came from the petty -bourgeois conditions that she got into the middle of the Parisian artist's milieu. Amélie Lang started working as a model for the artists and around 1900 the artist name "Fernande Olivier".

Fernand got to know Picasso in 1904 in the Bateau-Lavoir studio house. She is said to have fell in love with him when both smoked opium together; He said that he was caught by her beauty. If Picasso's pictures from the early days of her relationship still look like he had taken less opium, Fernande is increasingly dissolving in his representations until 1909.

That was of course to Picasso to the cubist representation "head of a woman" at the end of 1909 .

In autumn 1909 they had just moved to a new apartment, and Fernandes longing for respectable (i.e. marriage) Picasso is said to have got on their nerves. Picasso is said to have continued to treat Fernand, but with a certain absence-until it felt too neglected and an affair with a Montmartre painter (usually described as insignificantly described) to make Picasso jealous.

If part of a relationship has the feeling that they are too narrowed by the other anyway, the turn to a third party often seems to be a logical solution to the constricting partner. In fact, this partner often heralds the end of the relationship:

If the other still has feelings, he is massively and hurtfully affected by this behavior, this relationship will face an "end with horror" in the near future; If not, he lets his former love move to a new life ...

At Picasso, the latter was probably the case, he is said to have written to Georges Braque: "Fernande left me yesterday. What should I do with the dog?"

However, he has by no means caused such a fast and brutal end to this relationship as can be read. This only results from the data, from the first reports of tensions between him and away and his first meeting with Eva Gouel were at least two full years.

1911/12 - 1915: Eva Gouel and the "Woman in the shirt in the armchair"

In the winter of 1911 Picasso Eva Gouel to meet and paint, from 1912 to 1915 Eva Gouel was the woman at his side. It appears several times in hints in Picasso's pictures . B. in the pictures "Ma Jolie" from the winter of 1911/12 (Eva was called "Ma Jolie"), in "Guitare` J`aime Eva`" and "Violon 'Jolie Eva'" , both from 1912, and in the picture "Femme en chemise assise dans and fitts" from 1913.

This "woman in the shirt in the armchair" is one of the numerous pictures of Picasso who can be viewed New York Metropolitan Museum of Art "Le Rêve" , which you can read in Art-O-Gram: Picasso's "Dream" or the incredible story of "Le Rêve".

Eva Gouel was suffering from tuberculosis in early 1915, in the middle of the war Picasso had set sky and hell in motion to organize treatment for her. In mid -February 1915 she was operated on, but the delicate woman could not overcome the disease and died in December 1915.

Picasso is said to have loved Eva Gouel very much, he is said to have been shaken by her death, friends described him as depressed.

1915 - 1916: Gabrielle Depeyre - secret interlude, secret dedication

After Eva Gouel, Picasso looked for consolation in a woman: at Gabrielle (Gaby) Depeyre , an affair that was kept so well -kept on both sides that she was only unveiled by a biographies in 1987.

That is why Gaby Depeyre does not have portraits, at least no "right" in oil, but only drawings, watercolors and studies. Picasso had left compromising love messages on this, hidden in the picture or on the passportout.

The artist, who was emotionally hit at the time, is said to have seriously fell in love with Gaby Depeyre, and a note is said to have even been found on the passporttout of a collage: "J'ai Demandé Ta Main au Bon Dieu. Paris 22 Fevrier 1916" ("I asked dear God for your hand. Paris, February 22, 1916").

In vain, she already took the last name of her long -time friend Herbert Lepinasse in the middle of the affair with Picasso (as a sign of Picasso?) And married it in early 1917. The secret messages on Picasso's artistic gifts to his Gaby were largely made by her when she offered some of her portraits in the art market in the 1950s.

John Richardson immediately on the right track Christie's US branch

He wanted to get in touch with her personally and failed, and said Picasso on the portraits, "who was happy to see her, but showed angrily about being reminded of the episode he had decided to forget." (As similar to John Richardson in: Picasso's secret love. Picasso's Secret Love, in: Douglas Cooper and the Masters of Cubism, Basel, 1987, pp. 183-196).

It was only when the married couple died in the early 1970s that Gabrielle Lespinasses niece sold some pieces, in addition to works of art (with secret dedications), love letters from Picasso. art collector and Picasso expert Douglas Cooper who lives in Monte Carlo, came into possession , who kept the only evidence of the affair strictly secret.

presented her to the "inclined audience" in the October edition of the British magazine "House & Garden"

1916 - 1917: Irène Lagut - there is nothing left than a letter

Picasso failed at Gabrielle Depeyre/Lespinasse with his marriage proposal from February 1916, whereupon he turned to the artist Irène Lagut and started an affair with her. Irène Lagut, actually Marie-pure Onésime Lagut, is said to have moved to Picasso in his villa in Montrouge even in August 1916, and the affair is said to have taken until the beginning of 1917. Picasso is also said to have made a marriage proposal, which she also rejected.

This affair was probably not entirely uncomplicated as a whole, Lagut was actually lined up with the Russian Serge Ferat (pseudonym by Count Sergueï Nikolaïevitch Yastrebzov), who in turn was strongly claimed by Hélène d'Oettingen, but which was actually his father's lover ... Irène should have briefly went back in early 1917 and was then with the woman's hero and Writer Raymond Radiguet lies, who presented the scandal novel "Le Diable Au Corps" ("the devil in the body") in 1923 and, in the same year, died in the same year by the devil's typhoid in his own body.

In the meantime, Irène was already with the composer Georges Auric, and in 1922 or 1923 she is said to have been seen again with Picasso. Even then, this "round of encounters" was a welcome clapping topic, the famous French literary Guillaume Apollinaire even made an entire key novel in which Irène, Serge Ferat, Hélène d'Oettingen, Apollinaire and Picasso appear under different names.

modern art collection was auctioned by Alexandre and Odile Loewy on March 24, 2010 at Sotheby’s in Paris , the only remnant from Picasso's love affair with Irène was there: a letter of November 30, 1916 that Picasso wrote in Montrouge to Irène, with the following content:

"I don't think you know my dear Irène, but you recently inflicted pain, a lot of pain. I don't know how to do my tasks when I always have to think of you. I'm happy about your letter and you see you tomorrow. I love you and I hug you, picasso".

For Loewy, who is said to have bought the letter from Irène Lagut in the 1940s, probably a good business: the letter brought almost € 385,000.

Either way, the interpretation is ...

Anyone who develops the ambition to measure the quality of Picasso's relationships on the traces that left these relationships in their art will find a lot of material for speculation in the just described phase of Picasso. The more pictures were named after a woman, the more this woman had succeeded in fascinating the Picasso, which was mostly mentally in his art, often comes out.

If you soberly adhere to the safely handed down facts, you may come to the conclusion that Picasso first had a long relationship with a woman who was badly treated in her childhood and youth who opposed this fate with exceptional strength and developed a good self -confidence and idiosyncrasy, which, of course, was naturally too exhausting.

Therefore, a gentle blonde became the successor, so gently that she died out Picasso under her hands ... and the beautiful and confident Gabrielle Depeyre only appears in secret messages in his pictures because she had long since decided to marry Herbert Lespinasse and only played with Picasso, and Irène Lagut did so ...

The first relationship could have started just as well, with the Fernande, which consciously conscious of themselves and their skills, as an ideal partner for discussions about life and art.

Perhaps the other of the same age, whose early life was far less protected than that of Picasso, just had too many experiences ahead, maybe Picasso not yet in the middle of his relationship in the middle of his third decade of life for the "relationship for eternity", perhaps the traumatized by its past, in a comprehensible manner, had even added too much to him, the empathy of the artist even overestimated the empathy. ...

A lot is written about Marcelle Humbert á la Eva Gouel and her tenderness and her gentleness, but in the normally accessible reports, training or a profession are never mentioned. In a Mirrors article (from 1956) we still learn that Marcelle Humbert did not live from air and love , but worked as a model.

Which does not mean that she did not do so in addition to a very demanding training or a degree, she was at least in front of Picasso with the extensively educated painter Louis Marcoussis, maybe Marcelle/Eva was a very clever woman who was loved by Picasso ... Perhaps Picasso's Parisian environment was so xenophobic that he was thoroughly unsettled and in the relationships with Gabrelle. Also looking for both support and legitimation for Irène Lagut ...

Perhaps elements from both variants just outlined were also involved, or in the decisive core of these relationships everything was actually very different ...

Picasso to the "Great Guess of Gender" : "If men knew what women think, they would be a thousand times." (found on natune.net/zitate/autor/pablo%20picasso ).

This sentence is often interpreted, by male authors with a disturbed self -image with the meaning that men would go to the laundry much more often if they only know what they think. It can also be seen differently and assumed that Picasso wanted to express his uncertainty by women and his insight over that women have great serenity towards men.

Every woman who not only loves her husband, but also appreciates, will also add that the genders could be turned over as well in this sentence - which fits that this quote is sometimes attributed Paloma Picasso

You can read more about the other women of Picassos in the following scenes of this article; More about Picasso's life, which was not just about women, learn in the articles "Art-O-Gramm: Picasso-a long life for art", "Art-O-Gram: Picasso-born the artist" , "Art-O-Gramm: Picasso-an artist and three wars" , "Art-O-Gramm: Picasso-famous art and her secret : " Art-O-Gram-" Guarantee for top ranking " and" Art-O-Gram: Picasso today ".