Picasso's tragic first wife emerges from the shadows

Very mysterious woman

"She is a very mysterious woman. In his portraits and photos of her she does not smile a lot ... but when you see her in the films she is actually very joyous and girl-like. She's a dancer and she is always dressing up and being playful with the dogs."

Ruiz-Picasso said it emerged from her letters that Olga had good reason to be sad and preoccupied.

Born in what is now Ukraine, her father－a colonel in the Russian imperial army－h(huán)ad disappeared in the chaos of the Bolshevik Revolution.

While she and Picasso were climbing the social ladder in Paris, her family was losing everything.

Picasso idealized Olga on canvas as the model of perfect motherhood after the birth of their son Paulo in 1921, but soon the relationship began to go wrong.

"She was known for her fits of jealousy and obviously there were some real tensions within the relationship," Philippot said.

"But I think Picasso had love and respect for her. He too was a prisoner of their situation, which he expressed in comparing himself to the Minotaur," the imprisoned mythological half-man half bull.

The couple separated in 1935, but still financially dependent on him, "Olga had real trouble accepting the separation", Philippot added.

"She was very alone and she suffered a lot. After the war when Picasso settled in the south of France, Olga followed him, going from hotel to hotel, living out of her suitcase," while Paulo became his father's chauffeur.

"She would send Picasso little cards with photographs of Paulo and the grandchildren as if they were still a family."

But Picasso "never replied to her letters" and wanted nothing of the reconciliation and conventional family life that Olga craved.

Dismissed as "mad" by many of Picasso's friends, she died from cancer in the French Mediterranean resort of Cannes in 1955. Four years later Picasso married Roque, who he painted obsessively until his death in 1973.

The exhibition runs until September 3.