P a b l o P i c a s s o
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The girl is Picasso's latest love, Marie Therese Walther, a statuesque blonde whom the painter met in 1927, when he was 46 and she only 17. For several years the affair remained a secret: so much so that Marie Therese hardly figured in Picasso's work, normally so charged with autobiographical fact and fantasy. But by 1932 the secret was out, and this painting is one of several in which the artist celebrated her youth and loveliness.
Picasso most often shows her as sunk in her own rounded, opulent flesh, either dreamily compliant or actually asleep. Here, however, Marie Therese takes a more active role, contemplating her image in a long mirror.
In legend and folk tale the mirror often shows more than a faithful reversed image of the gazer, and the difference between the two images of the girl in this picture is striking; it suggests among other things that the mirror image is Marie Therese's dark side or Freudian unconscious.
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Source: Life and Works of Picasso
Further Reading: Biography I
Further Reading: Life of Picasso
Further Reading: Pablo Picasso & Jean Cocteau
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