Love, Fame, Tragedy
Pablo Picasso
Nude Woman in a Red Armchair, 1932 | Oil on canvas | Tate, Succession Picasso
Aged 45, Picasso fell in love with Marie-Terese Walter, a sumptuous 17-year-old whom he met in Paris by chance. The couple started an affair – Picasso was married to Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova – and this show concentrates on just one year in that heady relationship, 1932.
Love inspired a fury of works – Picasso painted day and night and produced some 100 works ranging from large canvases to sketches. Three of the greatest paintings shown here for the first time were made in just five days.
Installed in an apartment opposite his, Picasso crept over to his mistress whenever he could, often returning to his studio to paint in post-coital ecstasy. Olga, busy with family and arranging their social life – Picasso was by now nothing short of a celebrity – did not suspect anything despite the highly sexualised images. The opening portrait shows Marie-Terese in a state of bedroom bliss, head thrown back, eyes closed, dreaming presumably of her famous lover. The variations on the theme of this secret love affair are endless – she is naked under a hot sun; she is curled up like a cat.
Though immortalised in these works, Picasso set Marie-Terese in time. How could she survive this rejection? Four years after his death, she committed suicide, thus the show’s title: Love, Fame, Tragedy.
Until September 9th at Tate Modern, London, UK
