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Picasso’s first lover more than a victim in Paris expo
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Controversial artist: Spanish painter Pablo Picasso’s relationship with his serious partner, Fernande Olivier, is under the spotlight at a new exhibition in the Montmartre Museum, in the north of Paris. (Wikimedia Commons/Wikimedia Commons)
F
ifty years on from Pablo Picasso's death -- and five years after the #MeToo movement started highlighting celebrities' abuse of women -- a new exhibition in Paris focuses on one of the early partners of the controversial artist.
If Picasso's reputation has taken a battering in the post-MeToo world, it is in part due to his treatment of Fernande Olivier, his first serious partner.
But for Cecile Debray, director of the Picasso Museum in Paris, we cannot just view the artist in the prism of modern-day sensibilities.
Possessive and jealous, Picasso would lock Olivier in their ramshackle Paris apartment when he went out and made sure she doted on him while he worked long into the night.
This should not however overshadow the story of their time together, say the organizers of a new exhibition at the Montmartre Museum, in the north of Paris.
The new show puts pages from her memoirs alongside dozens of paintings and sculptures by Picasso and others from that famous artists' circle.
"Picasso, due to a sort of morbid jealousy, kept me as a recluse," Olivier wrote in her diary. "But with tea, books, a divan and little cleaning to do, I was happy, very happy."
