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"20 love letters" sketches painted by Pablo Picasso are to be sold in Paris |
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Monday, 20 June 2005 |
"20 love letters" - sketches painted by Pablo Picasso
are to be sold in ParisFor more than 50 years Genevive Laporte, ex-lover of Picasso, waited before selling 20 drawings made by the famous Spanish painter. They were painted when the famed Cubist artist had a 2-year affair with the French ex Resistance rebel, now poet and famous documentary film-maker.
 The sketches are the history of their passionate but tender love. They show young Genevive in many different situations. One of them shows her in a wedding gown, one in a navy style jumper, another one - the couple's faces painted in the cubist style. Among the collection there is one with Genevive lying naked on a bed, called "Portrait of the 30th of August". When questioned about it Laporte said: Picasso wanted to sketch me lying on the bed nude. Sleep overtook me. By an automatic reflex, I pulled the sheets and covers over me and vanished. Poor Picasso lost his model and did not dare to wake me up. He waited patiently for me to open my eyes before he finished the drawing."
When they met for the first time in 1944, Genevive was 17, Pablo 63. She interviewed him for her school newspaper. When she told him, that young people didn't understand his paintings, he got angry with her and answered: "Since when do you have to explain the language of paintings? Do you understand the language of potato chips? Although the beginnings were difficult, they became friends. A few years later Picasso confessed to her that he had wanted to touch her since he had first met her but didn't dare.
The age gap wasn't an obstacle for them. Famous for his weakness for women, the painter had to wait for her for seven years. According to Genevive's words, she was worth waiting for: I think I was the only profound love he had and certainly the last.' When they met again in 1951, the circumstances of they meeting were like a fairytale. In the interview with the AP Genevive said: I told him that I was going home. And at that moment, I swear, it was like in a fairytale. The room grew dark, and through the skylight I saw a sky like I have never seen before, except in the Congo during tropical storms. He said to me: 'wait a little while, there's going to be a storm''. I have no memory of what happened next.
Genevive was Picasso's on-off secret lover during the time when the painter was officially in a relationship with another woman, the painter Gilot, mother of their two children. The importance of his time with Genevive is confirmed by his words: She saved my life. She made me laugh.' Their affair crashed in 1953. Laporte, then 26, left him as a result of her disagreement over moving in with him in the south France. She got married to an ex Resistance rebel and had a son by him. She managed to avoid knowing the dark side of Picasso's personality. It is well known that his lovers suffered from violent and destructive relationships with him. Genevive did not. She's in good health, planning to sell Picasso's drawings, for an estimated two million Euros.
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 03 September 2006 )
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