Germaine Pichot

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Germaine Pichot (* in the 19th century as Laure Gargallo; † 1948 ) was a Parisian painter model and at times was in a relationship with Pablo Picasso .

Life

Germaine Pichot was born as Laure Gargallo; the sculptor Pablo Gargallo was one of their relatives. At a young age she married a man named Florentin. It was under this name that she met Picasso in Paris when he and his friend Carles Casagemas arrived there in 1900 . While Picasso was beginning an affair with Germaine’s friend or relative, Louise Lenoir , who was known by the name Odette, Casagemas fell in love with Germaine, but discovered he was impotent. After a trip to Spain, which he had started with Picasso, Casagemas returned to Paris in 1901 without him. At a celebration in the restaurant L'Hippodrome on February 17, 1901, Casagemas fired a shot at Germaine, but it did not kill Germaine, as was probably intended. Casagemas then turned the gun on himself and sustained a head injury from which he died a little later.

Picasso created paintings on Casagemas' death and burial; the incident ushered in its blue period. On his return to Paris in May 1901, however, Picasso broke up with Odette and began a relationship with Germaine. In 1906 she married Picasso's friend Ramon Pichot , to whom she did not remain faithful. She lived with Pichot on Montmartre and received financial support from Picasso after the death of her husband in 1925. In the last few years of her life, however, she was impoverished and also chronically ill.

Germaine Pichot in art

Germaine Pichot can be seen in several of Picasso's paintings. It represented Les deux Saltimbanques , Femme assise avec un châle , La Vie and Au Lapin Agile , all of which were made at the beginning of the 20th century, and it was the motif of Portrait de Germaine , which Picasso created in Barcelona in 1902 . She was also shown on Les Trois Danseuses , which was painted in 1925 .

La Vie was originally designed differently than it is presented today: the young man in the painting was initially a self-portrait of Picasso, before he changed the picture and gave the man the features of Casagemas and the young woman standing next to the Germaines.

Picasso painted Les Trois Danseuses when he heard of Pichot's death. This picture also contains portraits; Germaine appears on the far left of the picture, Pichot on the right, Casagemas appears as a kind of crucified figure in the center. Françoise Gilot , Picasso's future partner, met Germaine Pichot as an old woman in the 1940s and reported about it in her autobiography.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e David J. Chalif, The Dead of Casagemas. Early Picasso, the Blue Period, Mortality, and Redemption , in: Neurosurgery 61, 2007, pp. 404-417
  2. ↑ La Mort de Casagemas on lagrandedepression.com
  3. ↑ Portrait de Germaine , christies.com
personal data
SURNAME Pichot, Germaine
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Florentin, Germaine; Florentin, Laure; Gargallo, Laure; Gargallo, Germaine
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French painter model
DATE OF BIRTH 19th century
DATE OF DEATH 1948