an artist Twenty artists Two hundred artists. The artist of a thousand faces. A brilliant and indomitable genius. Pablo the Bohemian The indefatigable worker. The puter The declassified The suspicious migrant in early 20th century Paris. low beefy With chest hair. Devouring eyes Radical creator. subversive Generous with his friends. Cruel to his mistresses. Misogynist (he classified women between goddesses and scumbags, first putting them on a pedestal and then knocking them down). possessive lover seductive abstract jealous Braggart Priapic Ruthless sadist (the painter Françoise Gilot, mother of his children Claude and Paloma, and the only one who dared to leave him, explained that during an argument he put out a lit cigarette on her cheek). controller Narcissist by the book (his granddaughter Marina wrote that he “subjugated [the women] to their animal sexuality, tames them, bewitches them, swallows them and crushes them on his cloth. After spending many nights extracting his essence, once they have bled, it gets rid of themâ€). Ardent and at times just a sad voyeur. Wild, until tragedy struck the ferocious minotaur who in his engravings raped virgins. “He was getting older, he was prouder than ever, he loved women as much as he always had, and he was faced with the absurdity of his own relative impotence. One of the world’s oldest jokes became his pain and his obsession,†observed John Berger.
Picasso the god of modern art (“I am Godâ€). A colossus I love you sir. revolutionary effervescent imaginative Extraordinarily productive. Deeply honest in his determination to reveal the mysteries of perception and being. Co-creator of Cubism. Superb painter, draftsman and sculptor. The man who with his vision freed our gaze. Vampire (gobbled up the work of other artists: Brancusi, who was Romanian and knew Dracula’s hidden tricks, loathed and feared his ability to suck ideas and energy in equal measure). Obsessive (“When I finish painting, I paint again to relax”). Spoiled prankster Astute financier. His own publicist. multimillionaire Idolized like a rock star. Sentimental Communist. Anti-war activist who left behind devastated lives. pacifist Solidarity (he gave large amounts of money to the republican cause and helped the exiles arriving from Paris fleeing Francoism). Eternally jovial. Human, in the end: already nineteen years old, he came down from the altar and from the beyond he portrayed himself as a skull, unshaven, his ape-like face, full of blues, his eyes wide in a spiral of sadness or fear and the lips sealed, as if everything had already been said or had nothing more to say. Dead, but still alive.
John Richardson, friend and author of a monumental biography, summed him up in a single sentence: “The man was a paradox. Whatever you say about him, the opposite is also true.”
