Picasso And Marie-Thérèse Walter And Dora Maar

Behind every great artist is a muse. And the mythical painter Picasso had plenty of them. Throughout his life, the artist had two wives, six mistresses, and lots of lovers. Although his relationship with women was complicated, many of them served as the inspiration for the artist’s exceptionally prolific body of work. It can be said that Picasso’s style changed as often as he changed his companions. In this paper I want to explore the main differences between two of his main muses: Marie-Thérèse Walter and Dora Maar. After visiting a museum last summer in Switzerland, I realized how different Picasso’s style was concerning his two models. Although each woman was during approximately 10 years the exclusive muse and lover of Picasso, there is …show more content…
He used to portray her in an erotic way, powerful and colourful way using feminine and sensual technique and material. According to Finn, it seems that Marie-Thérèse role of muse for the artist was “an unlikely destiny”. Probably because she was only 17 when she first met Picasso and her choice of life was then made really early in her life as she was still living with her parents at the beginning of their private relation. Finn argues that Picasso represents all his love for her in his paintings and he was representing the unions between the artist and the model. However, although she was interested in reading and music, Marie-Thérèse did not have any knowledge in art, unlike her successor Dora …show more content…
The serie of “weeping woman” that the artist portrayed of her is worldwide well known (Riding ). According to Bates and Meyers, in 1935, Picasso met for the first time the French photographer Dora Maar, while he was still married to his Russian wife Olga and involved with Marie-Thérèse Walter who was about to give birth to his daughter Maya (Meyers and Riding ). Dora played an important role in his life as she records Picasso’s daily life, such as the process of creation of Guernica (Bates and Riding). Picasso depicts Dora in many “weeping woman” portraits. His depiction of her are in colors, but on the other hand Dora’s photographs of Picasso are in black in white (Bates ). Dora was his mistress, model and muse. Picasso idealized her Slavic beauty and Latin elegance and he also portrayed her anguish and torment in his serie of “weeping woman”. The fact that Picasso was intrigued with his subject makes him to explore the theme numerous times. In the Weeping Woman (1937) that is the finale and most elaborated version of the serie. The brun muse Dora Maar is easily recognizable, even if her face and her body are deformed because of the cubist period of the artist. Again Picasso decided to represent 2 angles of his model: the face of Dora is visible in profile as well as front. Picasso was exploring how much pain can be communicated by a human face, but he did not choose Dora in vain. In fact, he considered her as