How have you been, dear friends? I am happy to share with you again these interesting topics that I am so passionate about. Today I take up again the impossible loves of universal history, those that in spite of time are still valid and are references to when we speak of passion, desire and madness. Today I am going to tell you about the forbidden relationship between Pablo Picasso and the young Marie-Thérèse Walter.

As you already know, Pablo Picasso was a great Spanish painter and sculptor, creator and great exponent of that revolutionary trend that broke with the traditional representation of the image called Cubism. He is considered one of the most influential painters of his generation and of others after him. Famous as a womanizer, sentimental relationships passed quickly through his life and all of them were reflected in his paintings. We usually talk about seven relationships relevant to Picasso, but in this post we will focus on one of the most important of his muses: Marie-Thérèse Walter.

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Picasso's first marriage was to Olga Khokhlova, a dancer from the iconic troop of the Ballets Russes. It was a difficult union because Olga belonged to a sophisticated and wealthy social circle, of which Picasso, despite his fame and prosperity, was not a part. He was in this half-broken relationship when he met Marie-Thérèse Walter. The story goes that she was 17 when she met Pablo Picasso, almost 50 years old. She was leaving the Lafayette department store in Paris and the painter noticed her and immediately embroidered her and said: "You have an interesting face. I'd like to do a portrait of you. I'm Picasso. From that moment, on January 8, 1927, the couple became inseparable and began a fundamental part of the Malaga painter's life.

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A few months after that first meeting, Picasso bought an apartment on rue La Boetie, near the house where he lived and gave it to Marie-Thérèse. There he began to paint her and also there he began his love story making her not only his lover, but also his model and muse. The story says that although they had spent a couple of years together, they still hid their relationship with Olga Khokhlova and to see each other they resorted to tricks and ingenious tricks. In 1930 Picasso acquired Boisgeloup Castle, 60 kilometres from Paris. It is said that he told Olga that he had bought the castle for her, but that it was the same thing he told Marie-Thérèse. Most of the portraits he made of her belong to this period.

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1932 and with the arrival of his new muse, Picasso had a time of much creativity and inspiration, it is said that he painted a work every day. At that time the straight and curved lines returned in his paintings, with a clear erotic connotation, giving a glimpse of the evident influence of the model and lover. His blond hair, blue eyes and white skin are the most admired portraits of the painter. In Picasso's paintings, Marie-Thérèse appears as blonde, sunny and brilliant, as in Le Rêve (1932) or the famous Nu au Plateau de Sculpteur (1932). It is said that she was the muse of more than 100 works, almost all of them with erotic themes.

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In 1935, when Marie became pregnant, a friend of Olga, still Picasso's wife, informed her that her husband had a longstanding relationship with a woman who was expecting a child. With this confession, Olga immediately separated from Picasso and moved to the south of France with her son Paulo. It was believed that the couple's passionate relationship between Picasso and Marie would remain the same, but that was not the case. Their relationship changed with the arrival of their daughter, Maya. Picasso needed change once again. Although he had struggled to maintain a relationship with Marie-Thérèse, he began to tire again the home life, the cries of the girl, the daily routine. This is how the young blonde became painted like a madonna and the relationship cooled down. That same year the artist met the photographer Dora Marr, with whom he started a new relationship.

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On October 20, 1977, four years after the death of Picasso, who had formed a couple with another woman, Marie-Thérèse committed suicide in the garage of her house. She was sixty-eight years old and since meeting Picasso she had lived imprisoned by the painter's love and shadow and as her daughter Maya later wrote: "she followed him to his grave, convinced that she had to take care of him even after his death". It is believed that Marie-Thérèse thought the same as Dora Maar, according to whom she said that "after Picasso, only God".

The clandestine relationship between Picasso and Marie-Thérèse has become an emblem of love, sex and desire in 20th century art and the paintings where she served as a model, in famous and highly prized works.