Personal life

Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1906, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.
When someone commented that Stein didn't look like her portrait, Picasso replied,
"She will".

After studying art in Madrid, Picasso made his first trip to Paris in 1900, then the art
capital of Europe. There, he met his first Parisian friend, the journalist and poet Max
Jacob, who helped Picasso learn the language and its literature. Soon they shared an
apartment; Max slept at night while Picasso slept during the day and worked at night.
These were times of severe poverty, cold, and desperation. Much of his work had to
be burned to keep the small room warm. During the first five months of 1901, Picasso
lived in Madrid, where he and his anarchist friend Francisco de Asís Soler founded
the magazine Arte Joven (Young Art), which published five issues. Soler solicited
articles and Picasso illustrated the journal, mostly contributing grim cartoons
depicting and sympathizing with the state of the poor. The first issue was published
on 31 March 1901, by which time the artist had started to sign his work simply
Picasso, while before he had signed Pablo Ruiz y Picasso.

In the early twentieth century, Picasso divided his time between Barcelona and Paris.
In 1904, in the middle of a storm, he met Fernande Olivier, a Bohemian artist who
became his mistress. Olivier appears in many of his Rose period paintings. After
acquiring fame and some fortune, Picasso left Olivier for Marcelle Humbert, whom he
called Eva Gouel. Picasso included declarations of his love for Eva in many Cubist
works. Picasso was devastated by her premature death from illness at the age of 30 in
1915.

Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1910, The Art Institute of Chicago. Picasso

wrote of Kahnweiler What would have become of us if Kahnweiler hadn't had a
business sense?

By 1905 Picasso became a favorite of the American art collectors Leo and Gertrude
Stein. Their older brother Michael Stein and his wife Sarah also became collectors of
his work. Picasso painted portraits of both Gertrude Stein and her nephew Allan
SteinGertrude Stein began acquiring his drawings and paintings and exhibiting them
in her informal Salon at her home in Paris. At one of her gatherings in 1905 he met
Henri Matisse who was to become a lifelong friend and rival. The Steins introduced
him to Claribel Cone and her sister Etta who were American art collectors; who also
began to acquire Picasso and Matisse's paintings. Eventually Leo Stein moved to
Italy, and Michael and Sarah Stein became patrons of Matisse; while Gertrude Stein
continued to collect Picasso.

In 1907 Picasso joined the art gallery that had recently been opened in Paris by
Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Kahnweiler was a German art historian, art collector who
became one of the premier French Art dealers of the 20th century. He became
prominent in Paris beginning in 1907 for being among the first champions of Pablo
Picasso, Georges Braque and Cubism. Kahnweiler championed burgeoning artists
such as André Derain, Kees Van Dongen, Fernand Léger, Juan Gris, Maurice de
Vlaminck and several others who had come from all over the globe to live and work
in Montparnasse at the time.

In Paris, Picasso entertained a distinguished coterie of friends in the Montmartre and

Montparnasse quarters, including André Breton, poet Guillaume Apollinaire, writer
Alfred Jarry, and Gertrude Stein. Apollinaire was arrested on suspicion of stealing the
Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911. Apollonaire pointed to his friend Picasso, who
was also brought in for questioning, but both were later exonerated.

Portrait of Igor Stravinsky, c. 1920

He maintained a number of mistresses in addition to his wife or primary partner.

Picasso was married twice and had four children by three women. In the summer of
1918, Picasso married Olga Khokhlova, a ballerina with Sergei Diaghilev’s troupe,
for whom Picasso was designing a ballet, Parade, in Rome; and they spent their
honeymoon in the villa near Biarritz of the glamorous Chilean art patron Eugenia
Errázuriz. Khokhlova introduced Picasso to high society, formal dinner parties, and
all the social niceties attendant on the life of the rich in 1920s Paris. The two had a
son, Paulo, who would grow up to be a dissolute motorcycle racer and chauffeur to
his father. Khokhlova’s insistence on social propriety clashed with Picasso’s
bohemian tendencies and the two lived in a state of constant conflict. During the same
period that Picasso collaborated with Diaghilev’s troup, he and Igor Stravinsky
collaborated on Pulcinella in 1920. Picasso took the opportunity to make several
sketches of the composer. In 1927 Picasso met 17 year old Marie-Thérèse Walter and
began a secret affair with her. Picasso’s marriage to Khokhlova soon ended in
separation rather than divorce, as French law required an even division of property in
the case of divorce, and Picasso did not want Khokhlova to have half his wealth. The
two remained legally married until Khokhlova’s death in 1955. Picasso carried on a
long-standing affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter and fathered a daughter, Maia, with
her. Marie-Thérèse lived in the vain hope that Picasso would one day marry her, and
hanged herself four years after Picasso’s death.

Dora Maar au Chat, 1941

The photographer and painter Dora Maar was also a constant companion and lover of
Picasso. The two were closest in the late 1930s and early 1940s and it was Maar who
documented the painting of Guernica.

During the Second World War, Picasso remained in Paris while the Germans
occupied the city. Picasso’s artistic style did not fit the Nazi views of art, so he was
not able to show his works during this time. Retreating to his studio, he continued to
paint all the while. Although the Germans outlawed bronze casting in Paris, Picasso
continued regardless, using bronze smuggled to him by the French resistance.
After the liberation of Paris in 1944, Picasso began to keep company with a young art
student, Françoise Gilot. The two eventually became lovers, and had two children
together, Claude and Paloma. Unique among Picasso’s women, Gilot left Picasso in
1953, allegedly because of abusive treatment and infidelities. This came as a severe
blow to Picasso.

He went through a difficult period after Gilot’s departure, coming to terms with his
advancing age and his perception that, now in his 70s, he was no longer attractive, but
rather grotesque to young women. A number of ink drawings from this period explore
this theme of the hideous old dwarf as buffoonish counterpoint to the beautiful young
girl, including several from a six-week affair with Geneviève Laporte, who in June
2005 auctioned off the drawings Picasso made of her.

Picasso was not long in finding another lover, Jacqueline Roque. She worked at the
Madoura Pottery in Vallauris on the French Riviera, where Picasso made and painted
ceramics. The two remained together for the rest of Picasso’s life, marrying in 1961.
Their marriage was also the means of one last act of revenge against Gilot. Gilot had
been seeking a legal means to legitimize her children with Picasso, Claude and
Paloma. With Picasso’s encouragement, she had arranged to divorce her then
husband, Luc Simon, and marry Picasso to secure her children’s rights. Picasso then
secretly married Roque after Gilot had filed for divorce in order to exact his revenge
for her leaving him.

Picasso had constructed a huge gothic structure and could afford large villas in the
south of France, at Notre-dame-de-vie on the outskirts of Mougins, in the Provence-
Alpes-Côte d'Azur. By this time he was a celebrity, and there was often as much
interest in his personal life as his art.

In addition to his manifold artistic accomplishments, Picasso had a film career,

including a cameo appearance in Jean Cocteau’s Testament of Orpheus. Picasso
always played himself in his film appearances. In 1955 he helped make the film Le
Mystère Picasso (The Mystery of Picasso) directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot.

Pablo Picasso died on 8 April 1973 in Mougins, France, while he and his wife
Jacqueline entertained friends for dinner. His final words were “Drink to me, drink to
my health, you know I can’t drink any more.”[12] He was interred at Castle
Vauvenargues’ park, in Vauvenargues, Bouches-du-Rhône. Jacqueline Roque
prevented his children Claude and Paloma from attending the funeral.[13] Devastated
and lonely after the death of Picasso Jacqueline Roque took her own life by gunshot
in 1986 when she was 60 years old.[14]