Picasso painted his wife for many years and his paintings reveal how his attitude towards her changed.

If Pablo Picasso and Olga Koklova were modern celebrities and gave an interview to a sensationalist newspaper, they could say that they separated due to “irreconcilable differences”, reflected in aspects such as atheism and religiosity, joy and melancholy, and many others. Even in eating habits and day-to-day behavior they were very different. Also, people close to Picasso didn’t like Olga.

Today the awesome.club wants to share with you a love story that proves that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Picasso and Olga Koklova on their wedding day. Young people appear in front of ballet posters parade

The 26-year-old ballerina and the then young and avant-garde Picasso, 35, met while working. To some extent, romance can be considered a love story that started in the ‘office’.

In militarized Paris after the First World War, the premiere of the innovative ballet would take place. parade, and its creators wanted to make a good first impression on the audience. Olga Koklova participated in rehearsals as part of the world-renowned ballet company Ballets Russes — or Ballet Russo. Picasso was working on creating the original decor for the ballet parade and he was delighted with the muse, who stood out among all the dancers.

“Group of dancers. Olga Koklova appears lying in the foreground”, 1919 — 1920

At first, Olga responded to Picasso’s insinuations cautiously, claiming that the painter’s insistence could compromise her. Sergei Diaghilev, founder of the Russian Ballet, took on the role of a sensitive matchmaker, and explained to his passionate lover that Russian women, and especially those of good family, did not allow themselves such quick adventures. Picasso followed Diaguilev’s advice and ended up winning the ballerina. The couple got married after a year in Paris. The ceremony took place in an Orthodox church, at the request of the bride. In an attempt to be even more generous, Picasso offered her a contract that gave her half of everything he raised.

“Portrait of Olga in an Armchair”, 1917

But the wedding gave way to an unpleasant incident. Picasso was a good son and decided to share his happiness with his mother by introducing his new wife. The painter’s mother received the news without much joy, and did not miss the opportunity to tell her future daughter-in-law that she was making a bad choice, because the artist would not be able to make a woman happy (making it clear that Picasso only cared about himself ). But the couple did not heed these warnings much and moved on.

“Portrait of Olga Koklova”, 1918.

After the wedding, the young people moved into a two-story apartment. Olga stopped dancing because of a leg injury and because she took on the role of wife. After a year of marriage, Picasso received a letter from Diaguilev in which he asked Picasso to go to London. Furthermore, he would ask for Olga:

“And Olga? Did she say goodbye to dancing forever? It’s unfortunate! Like me, Massine, the principal choreographer of the Ballets Russes company and an admirer of Olga, is also deeply sorry.”

However, Ms. Picasso was already used to the new routine. The painter’s friends, accustomed to their friend’s bohemian style, observed with surprise the expensive suits, the gold watch, the car, and the excessively tidy manner of the painter’s house. Or rather, just the first of two floors. In the second, Picasso built his studio, where he was in charge. On the first floor, Olga’s elegance and cleanliness reigned.

Pablo Picasso and Olga Koklova in the studio, 1919

Like any talented person, Picasso had a weakness for experimentation and new forms and was always looking for different inspirations. You could say that his lifestyle, the beautiful aristocratic wife, the suits, butlers, drivers and purebred dogs were a kind of experiment, a new form of creativity—it was life as art. And that happened while he was enchanted by neoclassicism.

Biographers tell the following story: once, Olga, looking at her husband’s paintings, said that she wanted to recognize his face in the portraits. After that, Picasso is said to have moderated his innovative ways a bit and made works more traditional.

“Portrait of Olga”, 1919

Olga was a perfect wife. Her grandson, Bernard Ruiz Picasso (creator of the Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte: FABA, and president of the Picasso Museum in Malaga) recalls that his grandmother was not afraid to leave home at a young age and abandon her family in Russia. She had a job in the fashion industry and was a star in Diaghilev’s ballet company; moreover, she was friends with Coco Channel. That is, she was an intelligent woman and open to everything.

During the beginning of her family life there were no setbacks and she only worried about the letters she received from her native Russia. In 1919, Olga received news: her father, an army general, had disappeared. Her brothers were fighting in the Civil War and her mother and sister were starving. She took to sending money and pictures from her husband, in the hope that it would help them survive, but the post office didn’t work very well and there were no guarantees that the letters would arrive.

During this stage of their marriage, Picasso used to draw Olga sad, deep in thought. But he didn’t ask her to make those expressions; that was the former ballerina’s state of mind all along.

“Sitting Woman (Olga)”, 1920

Her son Paulo was an important distraction for Olga and a new source of inspiration and pride for Picasso. He was born in 1921. Thanks to him, Olga felt alive again: in the paintings and photographs of that time, she appears smiling and happy. Picasso made many portraits of Olga with her little son.

“Mother and Child”, 1921

Some time later, Picasso began to feel that he had already been too bourgeois and was tired of his friends’ comments and his ‘decent’ lifestyle. The family of the painter and the former ballerina began to fall apart. The endless social events and dinner parties began to bore the painter very much. Furthermore, according to Picasso himself, Olga was fascinated by her son: she overprotected and pampered him too much. So the painter started putting all the rancor he was feeling into the paintings. He was bothered by her love of fashion, her social circle and her way of thinking.

“Portrait of a Woman (Olga)”, 1923

In January 1927, Picasso met a 17-year-old girl named Marie-Thérèse Walter, who went on to assume the position of muse. A few years later, her secret was revealed and they had a daughter, Maya. Upon discovering her husband’s double life, Olga took her son, Paulo, and left.

Picasso tried to get a divorce, but the contract they had signed required him to give her half of what he had. The artist refused to give part of his work. There was a long delay in the divorce process, and Olga remained his wife until her death—she died in 1955.

“Woman in a Hat (Olga)”, 1935

After the separation, Olga’s reputation and health were severely affected. Picasso wasn’t very nice when he talked about her, especially when it came to scandals and jealousy scenes. Olga, finding herself betrayed, began to write letters to him, one after another, full of resentment and anguish. She sent pictures of her son and even followed Picasso down the street, shouting: “You pretend in vain that I don’t exist.”

As long as the ballerina and the genius of painting were alive, people were convinced by Picasso’s charisma. His art made everyone forget that a coin always has two faces.

But don’t think that Marie-Thérèse Walter was Picasso’s muse for long. New muses were entering and leaving the painter’s life and many ended up getting to know each other when he was not present. His lover Françoise Gilot recounts that the painter’s words were as follows when two of his mistresses told him that he should choose who he would be with: “Personally, I like them all. I said they would have to fight for me. And they started to fight. This is one of my favorite memories.”

Do you think that this story could have had a happy ending or that, given the painter’s personality, the romance with Olga was bound to have that end?