Paris exhibition shines a new light on Picasso’s forgotten wife
Paris — She was Picasso’s forgotten wife, written out of history as a "neurotic", snobbish depressive who was a drag on the great artist. But a new exhibition is shining a very different light on Olga Khokhlova, Picasso’s first wife, who he refused to divorce because he did not want to split his artworks and his vast wealth with her. Drawing on previously unseen letters, photographs and films from the Picasso family’s private archives, Khokhlova emerges as a major influence on the greatest painter of the 20th century. Picasso fell madly in love with the beautiful Russian ballerina in 1917 after seeing her dance in Parade by Sergei Diaghilev, Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau, for which he had designed the set and the costumes. The exhibition at the Picasso Museum in Paris — the first ever devoted to Khokhlova — shows how she was his main model and muse throughout his classical period. First his view of her was carnal, but as time went by and his ardour cooled, he portrayed her as melancho...
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