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Title: Portrait of Olga in an Armchair. Artist: Pablo Picasso (Spanish, Malaga 1881–1973 Mougins, France) Date: 1918. Geography: Country of Origin France. Medium: Oil on canvas. Dimensions: 51 3/16 × 34 15/16 in. (130 × 88.8 cm) Classification: Paintings. Credit Line: Musée national Picasso – Paris. Dation Pablo Picasso, 1979
- Olga Khokhlova. 1917
- Olga Khokhlova in A Mantilla. 1917
- Portrait of Olga in An Armchair. 1917
- Portrait of Olga Khokhlova. 1918
- Olga Reading in An Armchair. 1920
- Olga Lost in Thought. 1923
- Maternity. 1921
- Dance. 1925
- Nude in A Red Chair. 1929
- Head of A Woman. Olga Picasso. 1935
Picasso and Olga Khokhlova met thanks to impresario Sergei Diaghilev. She was a dancer with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company, while Picasso was a set and costume designer for the revolutionary ballet Parade.
The ardent Spaniard was captivated by the beauty and refined manners of his Russian wife. He followed the ballet troupe on a tour of Spain, where he painted one of the most famous portraits of Khokhlova—in a traditional Spanish lace mantilla (Picasso actually used an ordinary tablecloth to imitate it).
Diaghilev hinted to Picasso that it was customary to marry Russian women, and so the amorous Spaniard decided to do so. It was for Olga’s sake that the artist departed from Cubism, and this period of his work is often described as “neoclassical”—all because his wife wanted to look like her real self in his pictures.
There is always a touch of the personalin any Picasso canvas. The image of Olga became ever-present in the artist’s studio, and over their 17 years of life together, it took on many different forms, verging at times on the religious.
More often than not, it seems, Picasso painted Olga in a sitting position. For the sake of her husband, she gave up her ballet career and decided not to go on Diaghilev’s tour of Latin America. She later suffered a leg injury and had to spend many long hours seated at their honeymoon villa in Biarritz, and thereafter in their Paris apartment.
While Olga was enjoying family life, Russia was being torn apart by the Revolution and Civil War. She was worried about the fate of her relatives, with whom she had lost touch for three years. Only later did disturbing letters start arriving from her homeland: her father had disappeared, one brother had died, another had fled the country, and her m...
In February 1921, Olga gave birth to the couple’s only son, Paulo. Picasso was overjoyed and portrayed his wife and child in the image of the Madonna. The portraits of mother and child are full of tenderness. The artist went on to paint many portraits of little Paulo, even depicting him in a Harlequin costume, as he did himself during his Rose Peri...
In the mid-1920s, their relationship began to deteriorate. Olga was increasingly jealous of Picasso (not without reason), hurled accusations at him, and was forever making a scene. On a trip to Monte Carlo to see Diaghilev, she was particularly hurt by her husband’s penchant for painting young ballerinas from the Ballets Russes. All the more so sin...
The crisis in their relationship became ever deeper, and Picasso increasingly deviated from realist images of Olga. Racked with jealousy, he began to meet secretly with other muses—and paint them in more cheerful forms and tones.
In 1935, the couple broke up. Soon afterwards, the artist’s young lover Marie-Thérèse Walter gave birth to a daughter. Yet for a long time to come, Olga remained a subject in Picasso’s work, albeit in a different light. Previously beautiful, henceforth she appears as a terrible monster. Read more: 4 Russian muses that inspired greats of 20th-centur...
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As for Olga, he turned her into a model for Ingres, he enclosed her in an immobility stripped of everything Ingres had dared not eliminate." (in Picasso: Life and Art, New York, 1993, pp. 159 and 166-167). (fig.1) Olga Khokhlova Picasso, Fontainebleau, 1921, in a photograph taken by Picasso (detail); Picasso Archives, Musée Picasso, Paris.
Olga Khokhlova. Olga Picasso (born Olga Stepanovna Khokhlova; Russian: Ольга Степановна Хохлова; 17 June 1891 – 11 February 1955) was a Russian ballet dancer in the Ballets Russes, directed by Sergei Diaghilev and based in Paris. There she met and married the artist Pablo Picasso, served as one of his early muses, and ...
Aug 13, 2021 · Pablo Picasso and Olga Khokhlova in the painting studio in London, 1919. Private Collection. Strictly for Editorial use only. Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images. In 1921, Olga gave birth to Paolo, and Picasso got the son he told friends that he desired.
Pablo Picasso Portrait of Olga in a Fur Collar (Portrait d'Olga au col de fourrure) 1923, printed 1955. Not on view. Picasso met Olga Khokhlova, a ballerina, in 1917. They married in 1918, and she was the muse of his Neoclassical period. The couple had a son in 1921.
On February 4, 1921, Olga Picasso gave birth to a son who would be named Paul ( Paulo). At first Picasso was delighted to have a son. Paintings and drawings of the baby in his mother’s arms testify to paternal pride and love. However, Olga became an obsessively overprotective parent, and, according to the biographer John Richardson, got into ...
