19 April 2018
Picasso 1932
Love, Fame, Tragedy (at Tate Modern, 8 March – 9 September)
By William Morton
It is common to think of artists as poverty-stricken, but of course it is not true in the case of artists such as Picasso who find success in their own lifetime. By 1932, he had left bohemian life behind and was distinctly prosperous. He had a Hispano-Suiza car, a chateau at Boisgeloup in Normandy and an apartment in Paris. There is a photograph of him on a seaside holiday, with his wife Olga and his son, wearing a suit and tie and looking like a successful businessman. What he had not given up was women and he had been carrying on with an athletic girl called Marie-Thérèse Walter, whom he had first met when she was 17 in 1927. He would eventually leave his wife for her.
In 1932, Picasso was apparently feeling under some pressure to branch out in a new direction in order to compete with his rivals such as Matisse. Although their affair had been going on for some years, it was only then that Marie-Thérèse began to figure in his work when he produced a series of paintings featuring her, many of which are in the Exhibition and some of which have a strong sexual undertone. They are not pretty, but powerful and striking. The mood varies but Marie-Thérèse’s distinctive face and a lock of her blonde hair are there, however distorted. In Nude Woman in a Red Armchair, her face is divided, one half looking forward and the other half sideways. In Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, her head eerily stares at her own naked body. In The Dream, a penis suggestively forms part of the head. In the intricate Girl before a Mirror (a subject for many artists), her face is doll-like and she is surrounded by feminine curves. Towards the end of the year, she contracted a serious infection while swimming in the Marne. This is thought to have been the inspiration for a series of paintings of the rescue of drowned and drowning people.
While Marie-Thérèse was often the subject, Picasso was immensely prolific during the year and he also completed a series of paintings of stylised women playing with a ball on a beach and difficult studies of Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece. There are paintings of women turning into octopuses or vice versa, simple but effective charcoal drawings and some appealing small landscapes of Boisgeloup in the rain.
In the year, a retrospective of Picasso’s work was held in Paris, and one room contains some of the works included in that such as the Blue Period Girl in a Chemise and the well-known The Three Dancers of 1925. A fine traditional portrait of Olga shows her looking slightly sombre as if anticipating problems ahead (but that is imagining things since it was painted in 1918).
The Exhibition is an excellent record of a very good year for Picasso and of his versatility and originality even if, by definition, it is not the total story of such a great and long-lived artist.
