Face of Marie-Thérèse

Among the most iconic subjects in Picasso’s art at this time was Marie-Thérèse Walter (1909–1977). Their affair began in 1927 while Picasso was still with his first wife, Olga Khokhlova, and continued for decades; Picasso frequently focused on the sensual and athletic aspects of her body in his imagery. He conveyed Walter’s classical features in this lithograph, initially created for the frontispiece of a book and then later issued on its own. Walter described their first encounter: “He took me to his studio. He looked at me, he seduced me. He kept looking at my face. When I left he said, ‘Come back tomorrow.’ And then afterwards it was always ‘tomorrow.’”