Reassessing Picasso’s Toxic Masculinity

“There are only two types of women – goddesses and doormats”, this quote by Pablo Picasso says a lot. In fact, most of his relationships with women-11 are known-followed exactly this pattern: first he idolized them, then he treated them like scum. Two of them, Marie-Therese Walter and Jacqueline Roque, committed suicide after Picasso’s death.

This controversial aspect of the 20th century art superstar’s legacy is increasingly in evidence: “I would accuse Picasso of being manipulative, of having a sadistic streak and of taking a certain pleasure in torturing women in a certain way, making promises and best wishes to them, even if it wasn’t intentional,” says Ann-Kathrin Hahn, curator at the Picasso Museum in the German city of Münster.

Women in particular often ask her how a museum can still celebrate an artist as an idol without criticism, she says.

Picasso: Unscrupulous and Power Hungry

Picasso was an unscrupulous genius willing to step on corpses for his career, wrote some of his former lovers in their memoirs. He had an almost manic way of immortalizing each of his accomplishments in his paintings, drawings, sculptures or ceramics. As excited as he was at the start, this would be cool just as quickly. Attraction and repulsion almost always followed the same pattern.

Fernande Olivier was the first lover to make public the story of her relationship with Picasso in her 1933 book, “Picasso and Friends”. She recounts their years together in Paris, from 1905 to 1913. When Picasso and Fernande met, he was an unknown, poor Spanish artist with a strong accent.

Olivier was one of his most important models during the early years of his career. He shattered her image into geometric shards; nose, eyes and cheeks are hardly recognizable as such in his Cubist artworks. Picasso portrayed the front and back view at the same time.

‘Demoiselles d’Avignon’: an expression of misogyny

Using Fernande’s image, Picasso created landmarks in the history of modern art.

In real life, he treated her badly and even locked her in their shared studio to stop her from modeling for other artists. She faced poverty when he left her for his new lover, Eva Gouel.

Rose-Maria Gropp researched the private diaries of Picasso’s mistresses and unpublished sources for her 2023 book, “Goddesses and Doormats. Women and Picasso.”

The art journalist sees in the iconic painting “Demoiselles d’Avignon”, an important work from Picasso’s Cubist phase, an expression of his contempt for women.

“After all, it’s simply inconceivable to think of a painting as catastrophic as the 1907 ‘Demoiselles d’Avignon’ without aggression on the part of its creator – that’s impossible,” she told DW, adding that it was equally interesting to see how the five women trapped in the life-size painting mirrored this destructive energy. Picasso was aware of women’s power, she argues.

Knock Picasso off his pedestal

Picasso despised women, says Abigail Solomon-Godeau, a Paris-based American art scholar. From a feminist point of view, people should distance themselves from this type of artist, she says, adding that it’s time for a new perspective on Picasso.

“What interests me are art history discourses, discourses about Picasso, discourses about great geniuses, about masters, because it is the discourse open to the interpretation of a painting,” she told DW. “Our perception of the painting ‘Demoiselles D’Avignon’ is not the same as it was in 1907. Now we look at it with different eyes.” She adds that nowadays questions arise that “could not have been put to the work 115 years ago”.

Solomon-Godeau would like to knock Picasso off his pedestal. He wasn’t superhuman, she says, and people shouldn’t excuse his toxic masculinity by pointing to his Mediterranean character.

After an initial period of need after separating from his first wife, Olga Khokhlova, with whom he lived from 1917 to 1935, he distorted her image in his paintings into monstrosities. One painting shows Olga sleeping in an armchair – a grotesquely deformed figure with an open mouth like a snout.

women in competition

Françoise Gilot, mother of Picasso’s children Paloma and Claude, wrote about the years 1943 to 1954 in her book “My life with Picasso”.

While Fernande was left penniless after their separation, Gilot was financially independent, coming from a wealthy family. She saw Picasso for what he was and didn’t mince words: “He always pitted those around him in competition, one woman against another, one art dealer against another, one friend against another. He was a master of using a one as a red cloth and the other as a bull. While the bull went to the red cloth, Pablo was able to land painful blows,” she wrote.

Gilot left Picasso

She was the only woman to leave Picasso, and he never forgave her for it. For a long time he even refused to acknowledge the paternity of his children.

Whenever he could, Picasso humiliated his wives, including in his art.

Dora Maar, who was one of his romantic partners, was considered psychologically unstable and suffered mostly from the artist’s hurtful words. She will likely forever be remembered as the “weeping woman”, as he portrayed her in his paintings.

Attraction and aversion: Picasso’s relationships with his lovers almost always followed this pattern, says the director of the Picasso Museum Münster, Markus Müller. He and Marilyn McCully published the 2022 book “Picasso. Women of His Life. A Homage”.

“Picasso’s daughter, Maya, once told me that Picasso left his wives as he went out again at night to buy cigarettes at the bistro.”

His contempt for women was also an expression of the times – and Picasso was not alone. His friends Apollinaire and Paul Eluard were also sex-obsessed erotomaniacs, says Müller. Picasso’s wives were usually under 30 at the time they met him, sometimes not even that age.

Picasso, a male obsessed with success, has been a hot topic in the art world since the rise of the #MeToo movement. Today, people would probably describe him as a prime example of toxic masculinity.

This article was originally written in German.