Interested in art? Like juicy bios? Here is a good place to start. Picasso: Creator and Destroyer is as meaty as they come. It is a chronicle of the artist’s life, but mostly of his loves.

Arianna Stassinopoulos Huffington is a political columnist who has become famous for her dissolved marriage to politician Michael Huffington and her scathing commentary on Politically Incorrect.

In this book, she covers a great deal about Picasso’s life, not just his art. He was born in Malaga, Spain October 25, 1881. At first, the family thought he was stillborn—no breathing or movement issued from the tiny being. Finally, an uncle leaned over and blew cigar smoke into his nostrils. With that, he “entered the world with a grimace and a bellow of fury.”

The book traces his youth in Malaga, and psychological events which deeply affected his life. His sister Conchita died when she was only 8, and left him with a distrust of God that stayed with him his whole life.

He hated school. He preferred drawing, which he had used to communicate since before he could speak. He became deeply rebellious, and even while studying art, would spend hours in Spanish brothels. His appreciation of women began early. However, as he grew older, women became like toys to him.

His first love was an older Frenchwoman, whom he met while in Paris and struggling as an artist. The beautiful Fernande Olivier taught him about love, and he drew and painted her over and over again, enjoying her feminine curves. From Fernande, the strong older woman, he moved onto the frail, tragic Marcelle Humbert, whom he rechristened Eva. She died in 1915, and he was crushed. He kept the belief his entire life that death enjoyed taking those close to him. His little sister Conchita, Eva, his friend and poet Guillaume Apollinaire….so many taken so unjustly.

When Eva died, and his career began a meteoric upswing, Picasso met a Russian ballerina traveling through France with a Russian troupe. Olga Koklova was average, but she looked the part of a successful artist’s wife. Together, they knew the beautiful people, went to beautiful parties, and Picasso became even richer and more successful. They had a son, Paulo, in 1921. They were separated in 1935, and divorced once he became not only bored, but completely disgusted with her.

In 1927, near the Galeries Lafayette, he met Marie-Therese Walter. It was the beginning of a sexual thrall for her that would last for years. She didn’t really understand his art, nor did she have much in common with him, but she would do just about anything he asked her to. He saw himself as a minotaur—the virile bull, and she the willing maiden. He portrayed this subject with her in his works over and over again. And Marie Therese later admitted he was obsessed with sex. She invested so much of herself, that when she was replaced, she never quite recovered. The moment she bore Picasso a child (his daughter Maya), she was no longer attractive to him as a sexual slave.


“It must be painful,” he said, “for a girl to see in a painting that she is on the way out.”

Picasso’s next conquest was the beautiful, troubled Dora Maar (Henriette Markovich). She was a muse of the surrealist movement, an associate of Paul Eluard, Andre Breton, and Georges Bataille. The first time he saw her, she sat in a café driving a sharp knife between her splayed fingers until she missed enough times to cover her fingers with blood. Picasso was entranced. He managed to subjugate even this most independent of women to the point that she and Marie Therese once fought a catfight in front of him while he watched and chuckled, not even trying to separate them. He loved to taunt one woman with the gifts of another. In front of Marie-Therese he would brag about Francoise’s athletic gifts. In front of Dora, he would brag about Francoise’s mind. He loved inflicting cruelty “with a surgeon’s precision.”

From Dora he moved to the beautiful and much younger artist Francoise Gilot. They were married, and she actually bore him two children, Paloma and Claude, but of all the women in his life, Francoise actually left HIM. She knew she did not deserve the ill treatment she received, and dared to take his children too. For her defiance, she was blacklisted from the art world. She could not show her work anywhere in Paris. Eventually she married the scientist Jonas Salk and found happiness without him. She was the only one. The only way anyone could receive respect from Picasso was to live through all the meanness he could dish out and still not crumble. Francoise lived to tell the tale.

Picasso’s last companion was the devious and possessive Jacqueline Roque. Resentful of everything that Francoise and her children had had, Jacqueline set out to become Madame Picasso. Once she did, she began isolating him by feeding him lies about his own children. They were not allowed to see him often. When he died, they were not allowed to see him at all.

Despite his prolific artistic output, Picasso was indeed a destroyer. Of the women in his life, Marie-Therese hanged herself after his death. Dora had a complete mental breakdown and suffered through electroshock treatments. Jacqueline killed herself in 1986 with a shot through the head.

This book (which was originally published in 1988) was made into a movie in the late 1990s called “Surviving Picasso,” starring Anthony Hopkins and Julianne Moore. It was only average. The book is full of flavor. You feel like you are really in Paris in the 20s, or Juan les Pins in the 30s. You get to really know the people of Picasso’s world—Max Jacob, his homosexual friend; Jaume Sabartes, his first real champion; Gertrude Stein, the doyenne of Paris society; Daniel Henry Kahnweiler, the gallery owner; Serge Diaghilev and Igor Stravinsky and their Russian cohorts; Ines Sassier, his amazingly strong housekeeper; but most of all, you get to know the women. You come to recognize their strengths, and then their ultimate weaknesses that caused them to love a monster.

I purchased the hardcover version of this book when it was released for $22.95. It is chock full of great photographs.


Recommended: Yes