In conclusion, Picasso’s sexual experiences were definitely a major influence to his artistic work. He was always surrounded by women whom, as Diana Picasso writes in her book Art can only be erotic, he “managed to penetrate as open windows” (Picasso, Diana 10). This is indeed unquestionable. However, what seems to be controversial is the role of Picasso’s women, both the ones in his life and in his work. People close to him talked about his falling in love with many different women throughout his life. But was it true love or simply a shallow feeling which helped him become prolific and successful? Jean-Paul Crespelle writes in his book Picasso and his Women:”…Just as he kept old matchboxes or pencil stubs, so he kept his old mistresses ready in hand. Just in case…” (Crespelle 11). Well, even though the balance bends towards his being capricious in most of his love affairs, we cannot necessarily claim that he didn’t care about these women. And how is this proven? By looking at his paintings, we see that Picasso was ultimately fascinated in portraying sexuality. And a way to portray this sexuality was to identify his models with people from his private life, whether mistresses or not. However, since his paintings are provocative and sometimes outrageous too, he distorts the facial features in order to make his models unrecognizable. In this manner, Picasso manages to “mask”, both literally and metaphorically, their identities, showing in this way a sense of respect but also recognition and appreciation for all that that they offer to his work. Once we have concluded that Picasso distorts the female faces to protect women and not to humiliate them, it is important to understand why he does so. Why does Picasso feel the need to protect his women and from who? Is it from the viewer, his own self or both? It is easy to argue that the former holds true. In one way, he wants to protect them from the viewer since most of the models are his mistresses. Therefore, due to their erotic portrayal and due to the fact that he was mad with jealousy, he wants to hide their identities and keep them just for himself. However, Picasso is not just protecting his women from the viewer. He is protecting them from his own self too. He knows that his creativity together with his thirst for anything connected to sex will lead him to create shocking and seductive paintings which will, as a consequence, embarrass and mortify his model, his lover. Therefore, he knows that a way to hinder this chain effect is to mask his model’s face and therefore preserve her secret identity. By distorting her face, he has finally managed to totally protect his model; both from the viewer’s eyes and from his own obsession with sex as now, he can experiment and be freely sexual without fearing that he dishonors women.