Picasso's Lust and Violence in Winnipeg

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Pablo Picasso, "Dove with Olive Branch," 1962

lithograph on paper, 21.7" x 29.8" From the collection of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 2007-067. Photographer: Stephen Topfer ©Picasso Estate/SODRAC(2017)

Love, lust and violence are arriving at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, thanks to the innovative, volatile and philandering Pablo Picasso.

Two simultaneous Picasso exhibitions are at the gallery from May 13 to Aug. 13. One, from the National Gallery of Canada, is Picasso: Man and Beast, a complete set of the 100 allegorical prints in the Vollard Suite. The other is Picasso in Canada – 30 paintings, prints and ceramics the gallery gathered from across the country to reveal how the artist is “received and collected” in Canada, says curator Andrew Kear. As in most Picasso shows, expect to encounter a partial roadmap of the artist’s tumultuous love life, a trail of acquired and discarded lovers.

The untitled prints known as the Vollard Suite were commissioned, with no particular topic in mind, by Picasso’s Paris art dealer Ambroise Vollard in 1930. Completed by 1939, they were not marketed until the 1950s because of the Second World War. The National Gallery bought its set in 1957 and exhibited selections in Winnipeg in 1959. This time the complete set is on display.

Many of the suite’s first prints are simple line drawings depicting scenes in an artist’s studio. The mood tends to be tranquil, with neo-classical nude figures featured. There’s a bearded male artist (a stand-in for Picasso) and his mistress (Marie-Thérèse Walter), the artist being no longer smitten with his first wife, Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova.

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Pablo Picasso, "Minotaur Kneeling over Sleeping Girl," 18 June 1933

drypoint on Montval laid paper, 13" x 17.5" (plate: 11.7" x 14.4"). National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (no. 7241) © Picasso Estate / SODRAC (2017)

As visitors move through chronologically, the scene shifts to more turbulent scenarios with more details. In these pieces, Picasso becomes the Minotaur, with the body of a man and the head of a bull. One minute, the randy beast is affectionate. The next, his paramours are threatened by rape or murder.

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Pablo Picasso, "Femme assise," 1927

oil on canvas, 51.5" x 38.5" Art Gallery of Ontario, purchased, with assistance from the Women's Committee and anonymous contributions, 1954. 63/44 © Picasso Estate / SODRAC (2017)

Picasso in Canada features iconic images of five of the artist’s lovers. The star of the show, according to Kear, is Seated Woman, a Cubist 1926 painting of a curvaceous Marie-Thérèse owned by the Art Gallery of Ontario. Other loans are from such institutions as the National Gallery, Saskatoon’s Remai Modern and the University of Lethbridge.

Kear encourages visitors to marvel at Picasso’s artistic genius. But he also says the artist’s mistreatment of women cannot be ignored – a lover once adored as a “muse” could quickly become a “doormat.”

So, was Picasso a misogynist? The American writer Norman Mailer published an interpretive biography in 1995 called Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man. Mailer, who faced his own accusations of sexism, concluded Picasso’s attitudes towards women were too complex to be characterized as misogynist. Instead Mailer simply declared: “No man ever loved and hated women more.” Kear is unambiguous, saying Picasso’s treatment of women was “awful, awful, awful.”