Picasso, monster or genius? Philanderer, misogynist, narcissist… a new show explores the dark side of the maestro of modern art

There are few true geniuses who don’t pose problems by today’s standards. Elvis? Priscilla was 14 when they met. Roald Dahl? Anti semite. Ernest Hemingway? Inveterate drinker and womanizer.

Now it is the turn of Picasso, seen by many as the greatest artist of the 20th century, to have his reputation reassessed in a major new three-part series on BBC2, 50 years after his death.

A serial seducer, he had a penchant for young, impressionable women whom he frantically painted and then left, often after impregnating them.

Two former partners and one of his grandsons committed suicide, and a feud with one of his ex-wives led to lifelong estrangement from his youngest children.

But perhaps the biggest scandal is that his first great love Fernande Olivier, who inspired his works from the Rose Period and early Cubism in the early years of the 20th century, felt forced to return a young girl from an orphanage that they were planning to adopt when they discovered he painted the child naked.

No wonder some in the art world have suggested it should be canceled. “There has been increasing concern about the implications of his scandalous behavior within relationships,” says Frances Morris, director emerita of Tate Modern, which contributes to the show.

‘Canceling Picasso would be tantamount to canceling the history of modern art. But it is important to look at how his behavior affected those around him.”

Picasso: The Beauty And The Beast features prominent modern artists including Jeff Koons, Julian Schnabel and Jenny Saville.

It also talks to some of those who knew him best, including his daughter Paloma, who was banished from his home after her mother, Françoise Gilot, wrote a book about her ten years with Picasso. “You can’t say he’s a monster or a genius,” she insists to her father. “He’s just a man.”

The story begins in Malaga, Spain, in 1881 when Pablo, the first child of painter Jose Ruiz Blasco and Maria Picasso Lopez, was born. He spent his early life in Barcelona, ​​where his father taught at the school of fine arts. Legend has it that by the time Picasso was 13, the father realized that his son was more talented than him.

After attending art school, Picasso moved to Paris, where he lived in abject poverty, but was convinced that he would become something special.

His first love was artist model Fernande Olivier, whom he insisted would pose only for him. He was so jealous that he even locked her in their flat when he went out. Yet he had numerous affairs and their romance ended after seven years.

His next serious romance was with ballet dancer Olga Khokhlova, who was part of an avant-garde group for which he designed cubist-style costumes. They married in 1918 when she was 27 and he was ten years older.

Initially the union was very passionate, but after Olga gave birth to their son Paulo in 1921, Pablo resumed his womanizing.

Chief among these other women was Marie-Thérèse Walter, who was only 17 when she met the 46-year-old Picasso.

The first Olga knew that her husband was in love with another woman, when he staged a show with dozens of paintings of his young mistress. Olga left him shortly afterwards.

Marie-Thérèse became the mother of Pablo’s daughter Maya, but soon discovered that he had a new woman in his life: photographer Dora Maar. He happily juggled both women for a while, telling them to fight for him. And they did.

Dora eventually won, but only fleetingly. Many of his best-known paintings of Dora show her in tears. When the Tate bought one of the most famous, Weeping Woman, in 1987, Frances Morris traveled to Paris to meet Dora, who had been with Picasso for seven years.

“Picasso was enormously ambitious, competitive and charismatic,” says Frances. ‘He was the talk of the town and no one else got a look, which was a tragedy for the women involved in his life.’

But his relationship with Picasso ended in 1943 when he found a new muse in art student Françoise Gilot – she was 21 to his 61.

Le Reve, his 1932 painting of lover and muse Marie Therese Walter. She took her own life four years after Picasso died

When he moved to the south of France after the war, she moved with him and they had two children, Claude and Paloma. Francoise was proudly the only woman to leave him, and in the book she wrote in 1964, Life With Picasso, she revealed that he was coercive, controlling and prone to jealous rage.

Picasso tried to stop the book’s release but failed, and when it came out he was so upset that his last and last love Jacqueline Roque, who was 34 when she married Picasso at age 79, prevented it the artist’s children contacted him.

“It was very difficult not seeing my father, he was such a big part of my life,” says Paloma.

She remembers ringing the doorbell at his house once a year, but never being allowed inside. She heard about his death on the radio and was banned from his funeral.

Jacqueline even tried to keep most of his family from the funeral, and Paulo’s son Pablito was so unhappy that he drank bleach and died three months later.

Paulo died of alcoholism two years later, while Jacqueline committed suicide 13 years after losing Picasso. Marie-Thérèse Walter also took her own life, four years after Picasso’s death.

Like paint on a canvas, tragedy was piled on top of tragedy. And Picasso: The Beauty And The Beast provides an important insight into the mind of the man who created some of the greatest works of art of the 20th century, yet left a trail of broken women behind him.

• Picasso: The Beauty And The Beast starts Thursday at 9pm on BBC2.