Pablo picasso maya with doll biography

LONDON, 22 JANUARY – The women in Picasso’s life have always been at the heart of the artist’s oeuvre. On September 5, , a new muse arrived in the form of his daughter Maya, named María de la Conceptión after Picasso’s beloved late sister, and born in secrecy while Picasso was still married to his first wife, the former ballerina Olga Khokhlova. The daughter of his greatest love Marie-Thérèse Walter, Maya was to prove an immense source of happiness for Picasso. Her timely birth coincided with a personal crisis which Picasso later referred to as “the worst period of his life”. A lengthy divorce battle with Olga and the associated loss of his beloved property, Château de Boisgeloup, in combination with the increasingly worsening political situation in Europe and a deepening sense of the inevitability of war, conspired to overwhelm the artist, who was experiencing a nearly year-long abstinence from painting.

Between January and November Picasso painted fourteen portraits of Maya – the most important series Picasso devoted to one of his children, in which his joy as a father finds poignant expression in his joy as an artist. One of the artist’s most playful and bold depictions of his daughter will now appear at auction for the first time in more than 20 years. Estimated at $ million (in the region of £ million), Fillette au bateau (Maya) will be offered in Sotheby’s Modern & Contemporary Evening Auction in London on 1 March Kept by Picasso until his death in , the painting was subsequently owned by Gianni Versace, before being sold by Sotheby’s in London in as part of the late fashion designer’s collection of 25 works by the artist. Its reappearance on the market coincides with the passing of Maya Ruiz-Picasso on December 20, , at 87 years of age. The work will go on view at Sotheby’s Hong Kong ( February), Ne

Daughter of Pablo Picasso and Marie-Thérèse Walter (–)

María de la Concepción "Maya" Widmaier-Picasso (5 September – 20 December ), later known as Maya Ruiz-Picasso, was the eldest daughter of Spanish painter Pablo Picasso and Marie-Thérèse Walter. She devoted part of her life to the study and preservation of the legacy of her father.

Biography

Born on 5 September , in Boulogne-Billancourt, France, she was named María de la Concepción after her father's sister Concepción, who had died in childhood. She came to be known as "Maya" due to her own pronunciation of "María" as a child. She was the second of her father's four children. She had one older half-brother, Paulo (–) (the father of Bernard Ruiz-Picasso and Marina Picasso), from her father's marriage to ballet dancer Olga Khokhlova, and two younger half-siblings, Claude (–) and Paloma (born in ), from her father's relationship with painter Françoise Gilot.

According to his biographer John Richardson, Picasso registered her birth to state that the father was unknown, due to the restrictions of French law that dictated that a married man was not allowed to register as the father of another woman's child. At her baptism in , he declared that he was her godfather.

At the time of her birth, her father Picasso was still married to Olga Khokhlova, with whom he had one son named Paulo. Her mother Marie-Thérèse Walter had been in a relationship with Picasso since January By the summer of , he had secretly moved on to a new relationship with the surrealist photographer Dora Maar.

In the autumn of , Walter and Maya went to stay at a house at Tremblay-sur-Mauldre, where Picasso visited them on weekends. They lived there until the beginning of World War II. Walter and Maya then stayed in Royan from September but returned to Paris in the spring of to live i

Lover of Pablo Picasso (–)

Marie-Thérèse Walter (13 July – 20 October ) was a French model and lover of Pablo Picasso from to about and the mother of their daughter Maya Widmaier-Picasso. The relationship began when she was only seventeen years old and Picasso was 45 and married to his first wife, Olga Khokhlova. It ended after Picasso moved on to his next relationship, with artist Dora Maar. Walter is known as Picasso's "golden muse" and inspired numerous artworks and sculptures that he created of her during their relationship.

Biography

Marie-Thérèse Walter was born on 13 July in Le Perreux, France. She was the illegitimate child of a French woman and a Swedish businessman.

Early years with Picasso

On 8 January , Walter first met Picasso in front of the Galeries Lafayette in Paris. At the time, she was living with her mother and sisters at Maisons-Alfort, a suburb southeast of Paris. Picasso approached her and said, "You have an interesting face. I would like to do a portrait of you. I am Picasso". Walter was unfamiliar with his name but was flattered by the attention. The relationship began after Picasso invited Walter to visit his studio on 11 January , which was situated on the floor above his apartment on Rue La Boétie. He studied her face and body and invited her to return the next day. The visits continued daily causing Walter to tell her mother that she had a job. She said, "He told me that I had saved his life, but I had no idea what he meant". A week after they first met, they were in a sexual relationship. At the time, Picasso was married to Olga Khokhlova, a Ukrainian ballerina, with whom he had a five-year-old son. He and Walter, then seventeen years old, began a relationship which was kept secret from his wife until Walter reinvigorated Picasso's artwork. He began to draw her portrait repeatedly, inspired by her fresh, athletic appearance, curves, and oval face

As daughter Maya plays with her doll, adoring father Picasso plays with his latest artistic processing of space and colour. The plastic phase of figurative distortion is continued, while the characteristics of the face are pushed and remolded, as though constructed from modeling clay. As always, Picasso's sense of fun and humor surface: the doll has the real face, whereas that of the child is surreal, a beautiful juxtaposition. Both heads are absurdly enlarged compared to the rest of the body. The doll's eyes match Maia's outfit and Maya's match the doll's sailor's costume, and so the child is interchangeable with the doll.

The doll is probably a bizarre signifier for Picasso the father, who as a child was also pictured dressed in such an outfit. In the same way, Picasso was interchangeable with his son Paulo in the harlequin costume in his portrait of Despite the modernist distortions, this painting of Maya is suggestive of that earlier sentimental picture. The cuffs, ruffs and frills of sixteenth-century Spanish master Diego Velazquez, featured in the Paulo portrait, return here in Maya's frothy attire. They serve to define the body's pyramidal outline against the simplistic horizontal blocks of brown and white that separate the floor and wall planes.