Why Pablo Picasso's friends did not like the ballerina Olga Khokhlova, and How she changed the artist's life

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Little was said about Pablo Picasso's first wife, and even then they spoke in a not very friendly manner. None of the artist's friends concealed their dislike for Olga Khokhloi's personality. Picasso's biographers rarely talk about her as a significant part of his life. It was difficult to find people so different in character, worldview and moral values who loved each other as much as they hated.

How the "muse of creativity" became the "muse of life"

Olga and Pablo met on tour in Italy in 1917.

He is a thirty-five-year-old artist with years of poverty and wild life in Montmartre. On his canvases are the first beauties of Paris, Fernanda Olivier and Eva Guell, who posed for him in their best years.

She is a 26-year-old famous "retired" ballerina. In the memoirs of her first spouse, Olga appears as a mediocre dancer and a selfish woman who pursued selfish goals in marriage.

At the first meeting, Olga captivated Picasso with her beauty and chastity. The artist decided to win the heart of a Slav woman with a hot Andalusian temperament and talent. Pablo dedicated the brightest brush strokes to a woman.

Khokhloa was undoubtedly an "unconventional" muse. Picasso copied his best creations from the bodies of prostitutes and models, but until now girls from "decent families" have not posed for him.

Their relationship developed extremely rapidly. The decision to marry was facilitated by the October Revolution, which did not allow the daughter of a colonel in the tsarist army to return home without risking her life. In July 1918, the couple got married in the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Paris, despite the categorical excuses of the artist's friends. The next day, Picasso was published in the new social status of a socialite.

Why, surrounded by Picasso, did not like the Russian chosen one of the artist

Their origins and past were extremely different. She preferred social events to drunken gatherings with friends.

Her direct influence on Picasso manifested itself gradually. It all started with clothes, which Pablo never attached importance to. First, he got a personal tailor, and then - chic suits with a gold watch peeking out of a vest pocket. They brought in pedigree dogs, hired a servant and moved into fashionable apartments.

The apartment of the Picasso couple was strictly divided into male and female parts. Olga's pedantry was one of the traits that the artist's bohemian friends literally could not stand.

Former friends in Bateau Lavoir were shocked by such radical changes and found the influence of the Russian aristocrat "vicious" and "wasteful".

It also manifested itself in the works of Picasso. The first half of their married life passed happily and returned the artist to the classical style. They say that once Olga asked her husband to paint her face recognizable, in response to which, Pablo wrote many realistic portraits of the ballerina.

After the birth of his son in 1921, Picasso rose from pride and paternal love, passing all his love on canvases. Olga took on another role - the mother of the family.

The former ballerina managed to combine countless secular techniques with raising her son. In the family, disagreements began to arise due to Olga's excessive attention to her son. Continuous irritation Picasso splashed out in paints.

In the summer of 1923, the artist rented an upstairs apartment, fencing himself off from his wife and child. None of the servants were allowed into it, and even Olga had to ask permission to visit her husband. Picasso gradually returned to the years of his bachelor life, increasingly disappearing in brothels.

The idyll did not last forever: how the couple of the artist and his "Melpomene" broke up

It happened in January 1927. Picasso was walking near the Galeries Lafayette when seventeen-year-old Marie-Therese Walter met on his way. The young beauty knew little about art, but she became the artist's new muse.

Olga, as a wise woman, learned about her husband's relationship on the side. Of course, she did not take them seriously, but she did not put up with it. Tears and tantrums angered Pablo, and he began to distance himself even more.

His 1929 painting "A Large Nude Woman in a Red Chair" is extremely eloquent. The lines depicting the heroine of the canvas show the creator's hatred for Olga. Picasso could not get rid of her in real life, so he mercilessly disfigured a woman on his canvases.

By the time Maria Teresa gave birth to her daughter, the relationship between the spouses was worse than ever. The situation was aggravated by marital contact, according to which Khokhlova owned half of the artist's income.

Soon Picasso lost interest in Marie, but did not intend to return to Olga. He found inspiration in Dora Maar, and then in the young Françoise Gillot. His last hobby will be, forty years younger, Jacqueline Rock.

Khokhlova suffered and waited for his return. And he, in turn, changed models and lovers, now not giving them a chance to take an important place in his life. For the religious Olga, it was unthinkable to dissolve the church marriage. On top of that, she no longer had any relatives, except for Pablo, who suddenly did not need her.

Loneliness and fragments of happiness Olga Khokhlova

Many biographers of Picasso noted that Olga made a purely female mistake. She became completely dependent on her husband, daydreaming about the dialogue of souls and dramatizing their relationship, while the artist strove for absolute freedom from worldly conventions.

Not wanting to share his fortune with his hated wife, Pablo never filed for divorce, and Olga Khokhlova remained his legal wife until her death.

The woman clung desperately to the happy moments of the past, pursuing Picasso with reminders of her vows to God. She sent him heartbreaking letters and photos of her grown son.

In 1953, Olga was diagnosed with a severe stage of oncology. The disease was exhausting her body for a long time and painfully. She spent the last months of her life in the hospital, asking acquaintances to call Pablo. The artist knew about the requests of his dying wife, but did not find a moment to visit her.

Olga Ruiz Picasso died at the Beau Soleil hospital at the age of sixty-three in bitter loneliness and with deep resentment against her husband. She was buried in one of the most beautiful cemeteries in France - Du Grand Jas ("Cote d'Azur Pere Lachaise"), but Picasso never came to say goodbye to his first wife. He worked to create another everlasting masterpiece.