Alex Trelinski
LEGENDARY Spanish painter Pablo Piccaso’s penchant for women will be featured in a new BBC TV documentary series, ‘Picasso: The Beauty and the Beast’ to be screened on BBC Two this autumn.
Malaga-born Picasso, who died in 1973, was regarded as painting some of the finest masterpieces of the 20th century but many branded him as a notorious womaniser.
He once said that ‘there are only two kinds of women- goddesses and doormats’.
Decades later those comments are regarded as sexist and misogynistic and the documentary describes his personal life as ‘full of contradictions’.
In an interview with the Observer, his grandson has defended Picasso saying that women that got close to him knew beforehand what he was like.
Olivier Widmaier Picasso told the Observer that his grandmother, Marie-Therese Walter, always recalled the excitement of being with him – even though he had abandoned her just after the birth of their daughter, Maya.
“She still described him as wonderfully terrible,” Olivier said
“In a way, she was talking about him as if they were still together.”
Picasso was already married to a former ballerina when he first spotted Walter outside a Paris gallery in 1927 and they became lovers despite a 28-year age gap.
Inevitably, Picasso moved to somebody else, but grandson Olivier said: “My grandfather had love stories with each woman and no one was forced to do anything.”
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