15. Another of Picasso’s Muses Required Psychiatric Treatment After Infidelity
After Picasso lost his affection for his long-time muse Marie-Thérèse Walter, he fell madly in love with the surrealist painter Dora Maar. She became the muse for his famous painting The Weeping Woman. She was the dark to Marie-Thérèse Walter’s light in both physical appearance and energy. Walter was a blonde, cheerful and athletic woman who didn’t stimulate Picasso intellectually while Maar was brooding, dark, and a fellow artist who challenged Picasso.
However, despite the seemingly natural pairing of two troubled artists, Picasso turned his attention to another woman after spending almost a decade with Maar. This time, it was a woman 40 years Picasso’s junior and 20 years younger than Maar: the young artist Françoise Gilot. Picasso left Maar for Gilot in 1946, after which Maar fell into a deep depression.
Maar eventually suffered what was known at the time as a nervous breakdown. Her depression and reclusiveness became so severe that she sought out psychiatric help. She was subjected to electroshock therapy which was, at the time, a conventional treatment for severe depression and other mental illnesses (and sadly often for homosexuality). After her medicine, she became a devout Catholic and was described as nun-like in her chastity and behavior.