Picasso Muses

Picasso Self Portrait 1907

Fernande Olivier met Picasso in 1904 and by the next year they were living together. Their relationship lasted seven years. Both Olivier and Picasso were jealous lovers, and their passions sometimes exploded into violence

Head of a woman (Fernande) by Picasso 1909

Olga Stepanovna Khokhlova: A Russian ballet dancer of Ukrainian origin, was the first wife of Pablo Picasso (1918-1955). She was one of his early artistic muses and the mother of his son, Paulo. 

Portrait of Olga 1921 by Picasso

Marie-Thérèse Walter: French mistress and model for Picasso of from 1927 to about 1935, She is the mother of his daughter Maya Widmaier-Picasso. She was seventeen years old and he was 45 in 1927 (He was still living with his first wife, Olga). Picasso moved on to his next mistress, artist Dora Maar.

Woman with a Mirror by Picasso 1932

Dora Maar: at the end of 1935, Dora Maar was introduced to Picasso.Their liaison would last nearly nine years. Dora Maar photographed the successive stages of the creation of Guernica in 1937. She is the model Picasso, often represents in tears.

Weeping Woman 1937 by Picasso

Françoise Gilot: Pablo Picasso when she was 21 and he was 61. Picasso first saw Gilot in a restaurant in the spring of 1943. Dora Maar, was devastated to learn that Picasso was replacing her with the much younger artist.  Gilot and Picasso spent almost ten years together. Their son, Claude, was born in 1947 and their daughter, Paloma was born in 1949.

Françoise Gilot 1953 by Picasso

Jacqueline Roque: Pablo Picasso met Jacqueline in 1953 at the Madoura Pottery when she was 26 years old and he was 72. In 1955, when Picasso's first wife Olga died, he was free to marry. He married Jacqueline in Vallauris in 1961. (Picasso was married to her until his death in 1973).

Jacqueline with Flowers by Picasso 1954

In 1917, the artist met Olga Khokhlova, a Ukrainian-Russian ballet dances at Ballets Russes who became his first wife. Eventually, she retired from the company and traveled with Pablo to Barcelona, where she met his family. She was featured in the works like Portrait of Olga in an Armchair (1918). The two fought a lot, and Picasso soon became transfixed by Marie-Thérèse Walter around the late 1920s. In the year 1935, Olga separated from Picasso after she found out that Walter was pregnant with the artist’s child, but the artist refused to grant a divorce. Khokhlova was depicted in Picasso's art such as the painting The Minotaurmachy (1935) and Bullfight: Death of the Torero (1935) as a horse gored by the mythological minotaur, eg. Picasso himself.

The first significant woman in the life of Pablo Picasso was Fernande Olivier, who was his artistic muse that inspired his art throughout their seven-year-long relationship. The two met in 1904 and, just a year later, they began living together in his studio. Picasso and Olivier consumed opium, both were very feisty and frequently unfaithful to one another. Such a situation made Picasso very jealous and possessive, and allegedly he used to lock Olivier in their studio when he would leave.

Marie-Thérèse Walter was perhaps the greatest love of Picasso’s life. She was gentle, obedient, and served as the inspiration for some of his most sensual art—paintings and sculptures. Thanks to her physique, Walter was an ideal muse and model for Picasso's Surrealist period. The Large Still Life with a Pedestal Table (1931) is a disguised portrait of Walter or Sleeping Nude (1932) that manifests the artist’s infatuation with the sensory pleasures offered by Walter. In painting Guernica (1937), the artist presented Walter’s youthful features as a motif of innocence, while in The Farmer’s Wife (1938) he referred to Walter as a symbol of the indifference of European nations to the destruction of free Republican Spain by the Fascists.

In 1935, Picasso got introduced to Dora Maar, a gifted photographer, poet, and painter who instantly dazzled Picasso at the café Les Deux Magots in Paris when she took a knife and rapidly stuck it into the table between each of her fingers. Unlike Marie-Thérèse Walter, who was gentle and passive, Dora Maar was far more challenging especially in terms of intellect. Their love relationship was intense because Maar was part of the Surrealist movement and the artists in her own right. She was depicted through cubist style in a powerful Portrait of Dora Maar (1937).

Françoise Gilot was another Picasso’s lover and muse from 1944 to 1953, and the mother of his children Claude and Paloma. Very soon Gilot replaced Dora Maar as his primary mistress in his life and has become a strong holder of his happiness that resulted in the fruitful production of ceramics, sculptures, and his exuberant Joy of Life series.

The last significant woman worth mentioning was Jacqueline Roque who was Picasso’s wife, muse, and loyal assistant from 1953 until he died in 1973. When the two met, Jacqueline was twenty-seven, recently divorced, and working as a sales assistant at a shop on the French Riviera, where the artist produced his ceramics. Picasso was very much inspired by Roque, creating more pieces of art centered on her than on any of the other Picasso women. Interestingly so, on the night Picasso was to be buried, Jacqueline slept outside in the snow, stretched over his grave.