Pablo Picasso was a cubist and surrealist painter in the early 20th century. Three of his nudes of his lover, Marie-Therese Walter, were produced in 1932 behind the back of Picasso’s wife. The three paintings were created within five days and have not been displayed together since.
“I think since they were meant to be shown together, it’s ultimately great for them to be back together in all their glory,” said junior painting and drawing major Hannah Robinett.
Therese Walter was Picasso’s student and later moved on to be his personal model, leading to an affair. She was only 17 when the affair began in 1928 and led to her later pregnancy in 1935. Therese Walter was the subject of many of Picasso’s pieces through these years until Picasso’s wife discovered the affair and left him, taking their child with her. Therese Walter and Picasso never married but raised their child together.
“The Mirror,” “Nude in a Black Armchair” and “Nude, Green Leaves and Bust” will be displayed in the TATE Modern museum at the London location. “The EY Exhibition Picasso 1932 – Love, Fame, Tragedy” will begin display in March of 2018 and will end later in September. The exhibition will exclusively display Picasso paintings, the first solo Picasso show.
“The EY Exhibition Picasso 1932 – Love, Fame, Tragedy is one of the most significant shows the gallery has ever staged,” said the TATE official page. “Taking visitors on a month-by-month journey through 1932, a time so pivotal in Picasso’s life and work that it has been called his ‘year of wonders’. More than 100 outstanding paintings, sculptures and works on paper demonstrate his prolific and restlessly inventive character. They strip away common myths to reveal the man and the artist in his full complexity and richness.”
Along with the three paintings, curator Achim Borchardt-Hume has also planned for “Girl Before a Mirror,” “Rest,” “Sleep,” “The Dream” and more well-known Picasso paintings. The styles displayed will represent his surrealist style paintings created around the same time as the three nudes.
“1932 was an extraordinary year for Picasso, even by his own standards,” the TATE page said. “His paintings reached a new level of sensuality and he cemented his celebrity status as the most influential artist of the early 20th century. Over the course of this year he created some of his best loved works, from confident colour- saturated portraits to surrealist drawings, developing ideas from the voluptuous sculptures he had made at his newly acquired country estate.”
