Picasso hated women. Why celebrate his death anniversary?

The Guardian launched the first stone, finding itself dealing with the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Pablo Picasso (he died on April 8, 1973, in Mougins, on the French Riviera), so overabundant with flattery. What if the Spanish genius was an artist to be stigmatized rather than celebrated? Agreed, the Guardian has always been excessive in its attention to inclusiveness, respect for minorities and rights, to the point of deserving the definition of «woke», a word that cannot be translated into Italian, but which is close to meaning «too awake» .

According to the English tabloid this anniversary – punctuated by a flourishing of celebrations, exhibitions and conferences – should instead be the occasion to plumb the Picasso man full of intolerable defects. The accusation does not remain generic, the Guardian lists them: a monstrous misogynist, notoriously cruel, cultural appropriation, “vampire, sociopath, narcissist who left behind betrayals and suicides”. To denounce these gigantic defects is the critic of the English newspaper, Adrian Searle.

So it officially opens the debate which will certainly not remain confined across the Channel. Asking pundits, critics and other artists: Can Picasso’s unspeakable treatment of women overshadow masterpieces like Guernica? In fact, even just scrolling through his biography, the Guardian has some reasons.

An overbearing and tyrannical personality
Certainly that of Picasso was a dominating personality, who often lashed out, overwhelming them, on the women he frequented, pushing them into an abyss of alternating love and hate. «Women are machines built to suffer», this, in reality, was Picasso’s law according to authoritative critics such as Miguel Gomez. He divided them into two well-defined categories, stating that «there are only doormats and goddesses». «But the origin of his troubled relationships with women sinks its roots much deeper than his first love infatuations – Gomez explains again – just think of the author’s surname, acquired from his mother, Maria Picasso, a woman with whom he had an emotional bond bordering on obsession and for which he nurtured an immense esteem, only with her, he always had impeccable behavior and the same cannot be said of the women he involved in his romantic relationships”.

“I will die without ever having loved,” a furious Picasso declared to Françoise Gilot, the only woman who escaped the psychological massacre to which the artist subjected all his female conquests. Women who were a source of inspiration, each one linked to the subsequent changes of style, as the merchant Kahnweiler also remarked: «I have never seen such fanatically autobiographical art. There is no female figure that is not the portrait of the beloved of that moment».

All his women, all mistreated
Pablo Picasso was born in 1881 in Malaga and moved to Paris at the age of 19, where his talent began to blossom. In this context he met his first muse, Fernande Olivier. They met in 1904, she became his muse for some paintings, but the nightmare of Pablo’s jealousy immediately surfaced forcing Fernande to pose exclusively for him. She accepted and became an inspiration, she followed him for eight years, going through the pink and cubist period, as well as helping him to get out of the depression of the blue period. Fernande was abandoned in 1912, without excuses: in those years success was appearing and Picasso’s life began to change. Fernande, on the other hand, died in total poverty in 1966, and what seemed to be an unfortunate story took on the value of a warning to the painter’s future women, who burned anyone who came into contact with him. The second important woman in his life arrived in the same year he left Fernande, Marcelle Humbert, renamed Eva by the painter. Picasso confesses to her “You are Eva and for me the world begins now”. In that period his paintings speak of a strong eros and with bright colors. But this time too the story ends tragically. The young Eva died in 1915 of tuberculosis. Pablo accuses the blow and, despite everything, during Eva’s illness he accompanies other women.

Some time later in 1917, while working on the sets for Cocteau’s “parade” show, Picasso had the opportunity to meet a Russian dancer, Olga Khokhlova, Pablo decided to throw himself back into a complex relationship two years after Eva’s disappearance. The following year he decided to marry her and in 1921 her first son, Paulo, arrived. Khokhlova was the woman who introduced Picasso to Parisian high society, but this was often the cause of fierce discussions. The painter was not inclined to always have a restrained and moderate behavior, indeed he had a rather bohemian spirit.

In 1944 the painter met the only woman able to leave him throughout his life, it is Francoise Gilot. A young pupil twenty-two when he was already sixty-three. For Picasso it will once again be the source of a new artistic impulse. By her he had two children, Claude in 1947 and Paloma in 1949. Even with her Picasso did not lack cruel and often destructive behavior. During the pregnancies the artist adored and spoiled the woman and then just after giving birth he used to reject her. He, moreover, demanded that she dress in a very chaste way because of her boundless jealousy, while he loved to spend time with other women. In 1953 the young woman finally found the courage to leave the great artist, and she will be the only one to do so, so as to arouse in him such blinding anger as to make him capable of unthinkable gestures such as putting out a cigarette on his face.