The Art of the Erotic, Vogue

To Picasso, art was synonymous with sex. And it is his own granddaughter now exploring the erotic in his work. By Bettina von Hase.

Diana Widmaier-Picasso at her home in Paris.

Art historian Diana Widmaier-Picasso, grand-daughter of Pablo Picasso and his muse Marie-Thérèse Walter, says she learnt quite a bit about life and love while researching her new book, Picasso: Art Can Only Be Erotic. A sumptuous volume, it contains 120 erotic masterpieces, some of which have never been seen in public. Though Widmaier-Picasso never met her grandfather —she was only two when he died in 1973— she admits that the book was a way of getting to know him better — or, as she puts it, “An amazing way of penetrating the man, with all the play on words that this implies.”

The book's title comes from a conversation between Picasso and his friend Jean Leymarie, who was preparing a symposium on the subject of art and sexuality. Leymarie asked the artist where he drew the line between the two. “They are one and the same thing — art can only be erotic,” was the reply. He lived accordingly, immortalising in his work the major women in his life – Eva, Fernande, Olga, Marie- Thérèse (who met the artist in 1927 and was his mistress for 10 years), Dora Maar, Francoise, Jacqueline – from the playful nudes of his early years to the classical representations of the Twenties and the frankly sexual paintings of his later years.

Widmaier-Picasso became aware of her grandfather's more intimate work as a 16-year- old, when she visited an exhibition in Rome of his Suite 347 engravings (completed in 1968) — illustrations of Raphael's adventures with the model La Fornarina. She recalls in her book that the etchings of the fornicating painter and model "were so tightly packed that I had to get close to them to make out the erotic frenzy, which, on the face of it, possessed my grandfather at the moment of their gestation".

Widmaier-Picasso, who has inherited her grandfather's dark eyes and her grandmother's voluptuous features, studied law and art history at the Sorbonne in Paris, and worked in the Old Masters Department at Sotheby's before setting up her own publishing company, DWP Editions. Her next project is to produce the first comprehensive catalogue of Picasso's sculptures, about 2,000 works in all. It is a monumental task — for it, she has employed three researchers and been sponsored by art dealer Larry Gagosian — but one that she is thrilled to undertake. "When I immerse myself in my grandfather's work, it is as if he is still alive," she says.

“Picasso: Art Can Only Be Erotic” by Diana Widmaier-Picasso is published by Prestel, £37