5 great erotomaniac artists and their beloved women they killed

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

They were no less scandalous than talented, and in the life of each of them there were two great passions - for painting and for women. True, if these artists remained faithful to their paintings throughout their lives, then they changed women like gloves, not really caring about their own moral character and moral principles. And this way of life made their chosen ones unhappy.

1. Dante-Gabriel Rossetti and Lizzie Siddal

Dante-Gabriel Rossetti - the founder of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, poet and artist - was also a real sex addict. In pursuit of pleasure, Rossetti did not recognize any moral constraints. He shamelessly twisted novels with Annie Miller (model and fiancee of his fellow Pre-Raphaelite William Holman Hunt), Jane Byrdan (wife of another brother, William Morris) and many other women.

The main muse, and later the wife for the ardent Italian, was Elizabeth Siddal - the red-haired Ophelia from the canvas of John-Everett Millais. Rossetti painted her portraits, dedicated poems to her and … changed left and right.

Siddal, distinguished by her delicate mental organization and fragile health, endured such treatment with difficulty. Having become ill with chronic tuberculosis after posing for the famous Ophelia, she was forced to take opium tincture as a medicine. The use of opium quickly became addictive, and the difficult life with an unfaithful spouse more and more plunged Lizzie into an abyss of depression. A failed pregnancy was the last straw for her, and in 1862 Siddal committed suicide (another version - she died of an overdose). She was only 32 years old.

Having lost his beloved muse, Rossetti suffered so much that he even threw the manuscripts of his poems into her coffin. True, a few years later he changed his mind and opened the grave in order to eventually publish these brilliant verses.

2. Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo

Diego Rivera, known by the nickname "cannibal", a brilliant muralist and patriot of his native Mexico, became a true death for his third (and fourth) wife, the artist Frida Kahlo. Rivera, as a true Mexican macho, had a fierce temperament, which was expressed, among other things, in promiscuous sexual relations.

Despite the sacred bonds of marriage, he constantly started intrigues on the side, and for a while Frida managed to pretend that she did not know about anything. The point of no return was Diego's adultery with his wife's younger sister, Christina.

Shocked by the double betrayal of Frida, she could not forgive her husband, and after long ordeals and mutual betrayal, they still divorced. A year later, the most eccentric couple in Mexico was reunited, but with the condition: no marital duties - that was Frida's decision. Fourteen years later, completely destroyed by illness and drug addiction, Frida Kahlo died. Diego by this moment has become the meaning of life for her, she has not become the only one for him. READ MORE …

3. Pablo Picasso and Olga Khokhlova

Pablo Picasso - the most expensive artist of the twentieth century, the personification of tireless search and creative will, was a real destroyer of women.

“For me, there are two types of women: goddesses and doormats,” Picasso used to say. According to this principle, in fact, the personal life of a genius was built. In 1917, the artist, who had already achieved fame, noticed the ballerina Olga Khokhlova in the troupe of Sergei Diaghilev, with whom he then collaborated. Love flashed instantly, and Picasso finally decided to marry. A prerequisite was the signing of a marriage contract, according to which, in the event of a divorce, half of the property, including Pablo's work, went to Olga.

The family life of a hot Spaniard and a Russian aristocrat, alas, did not work out - they were too different. Picasso was drawn to bohemianism, Khokhlov to high society. When the fifty-year-old master had another hobby - the young Marie-Therese Walter, he began to think about a divorce. Khokhlova demanded half of the paintings, which was unacceptable for the artist. The couple never came to an agreement, and Picasso simply stopped taking Olga as his wife.

He shamelessly changed women: Marie-Thérèse gave way to Dora Maar, Dora Françoise Gilot, and unhappy Olga, remaining Madame Picasso, literally went crazy. She persecuted her unfaithful husband, bombarded his young mistresses with threatening letters, and at the age of 64, all abandoned, she died of cancer. Six years after her death, eighty-year-old Picasso married another lover - thirty-five-year-old Jacqueline Rock. READ MORE …

4. Amedeo Modigliani and Jeanne Hébuterne

Amedeo Modigliani, the tragic hero of avant-garde Paris, known for addictions and eccentric antics, a sophisticated intellectual and distinctive artist, had an amazing appeal for women. Biographers claim that the number of Modi's mistresses was a four-digit number. The creator of the most sensual nudes in art, alas, played a fatal role for the only woman he truly loved. Her name was Jeanne Hébuterne.

They met when Modi was 32 - by that time his reputation as a drunkard and rowdy was already firmly entrenched. Nineteen-year-old Jeanne, on the other hand, was a model of purity and innocence. For the sake of these relations, she broke up with her family, abandoned her studies at the art academy and doomed herself to hopeless poverty - Modigliani's paintings were not sold at all. A year later, the couple had a daughter, but the artist, exhausted by the lack of money and obscurity, continued to drink and use drugs as before.

In January 1920, after another binge, Modigliani accidentally fell asleep on the street, which led to dire consequences: he fell ill with tuberculous meningitis and died a few days later. Distraught with grief, Jeanne Hébuterne, being nine months pregnant, threw herself out of the window. She was 21 years old.

5. Egon Schiele and Wally Neuzil

Egon Schiele is a Viennese expressionist and one of the most controversial artists in art history. Schiele loved to draw naked teenage girls - for this he was accused of pedophilia and tried. The charges were not confirmed, but the artist still had to spend three weeks in prison, as his drawings were found to be pornographic.

In 1911, Schiele met Wally Neuzil, who became his model and lover. Even during the trial, when many friends and patrons turned their backs on him, Valli was there and denied any attacks against her beloved. For this, Schiele repaid her by marrying someone else. Her name was Edith Harms, and she was a girl from a wealthy bourgeois family, unlike poor Valley.

Wally, the artist offered to spend a two-week vacation with him once a year. The former muse, rejecting an insulting offer, went to war as a nurse, where she perished. When Schiele found out about her death, he changed the name of the painting "Man and Girl", which he painted during his separation from Neuzil. The canvas depicting Egon and Wally in each other's arms is now called Death and the Maiden.

Not only scandals with ladies are associated with the name of Diego Rivera, but also a huge scandal around the fresco, which has not subsided for over 80 years