Famous artists and their cats: 10 pictures of artists with their cats

In theart world, cats have always been a constant source of inspiration. These charming creatures, with their elegant bearing, graceful movements and enigmatic gazes, have always captured the imagination of artists of every age. But what makes the affinity between artists and cats so irresistible? Cats are a symbol of mystery and freedom because of their elusive behavior and independent nature that has always fascinated artists. Not only that, in the solitude of their studio or in the chaos of their busy lives, artists often find solace and inspiration in the silent company of their feline friends. Cats, lying next to their human friend for hours without making noise, become reliable companions and inseparable muses. Their reassuring presence creates an atmosphere of calm and concentration that fosters the artist’s creativity.

From the ancient Egyptians to Renaissance masters to contemporary artists, cats have inspired works of art from every historical period. Painters, sculptors and photographers find cats an endless source of inspiration to explore concepts of beauty, grace and mystery. In addition, in the folklore and legends of many cultures, cats are often associated with symbols of luck, magic, and wisdom, or at the opposite end of the spectrum, they have long been considered demonic symbols. These ancient beliefs have become deeply rooted in our collective consciousness and continue to influence our perception of cats as fascinating creatures.

“Cats are so enigmatic, poised between the domestic world and their nocturnal realm of prey and wild hunts,” wrote art critic Jonathan Jones. “They resemble their dangerous feline relatives, behaviorally and visually, far more than most dogs resemble wolves. Yet their mysterious ambiguity (cuddly pet or nocturnal killer?) makes them far more complex artistic figures than the tender-hearted images of artists cuddling their kittens might suggest.” And indeed many great artists have had their portraits taken together with their cat friends. Let’s take a look at a roundup of photographs of great names in art history in the company of their cats!

1. Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse was a great cat lover, and there are several photos of him together with his felines Minouche, Coussi and La Puce (“Flea”), to whom, it is said, he fed... brioche. They do not, however, appear very often in his works.

2. Pablo Picasso

There is a 1954 photo of Pablo Picasso holding his cat in his arms. It was donated in July 2010 to the Museu Picasso in Barcelona by Alejandro Nadal, son of the painter Carlos, the author of the photograph taken at Picasso’s home in Vallauris. “Carlos Nadal,” said Alejandro, “took this very interesting photograph of Pablo Picasso in Vallauris in 1954, a photograph in which the painter’s piercing gaze contrasts with the affection with which he holds his cat.” Nadal took the photograph during a visit that marked him deeply. “In spite of his piercing gaze, and while petting his cat.”

3. Frank Stella

Frank Stella is one of the great exponents of minimalism. In this photo, published in 2019 by the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art, the artist is pictured together with Marisol: a docile kitten who has long accompanied his work in the studio.

4. Vasily Kandinsky

From the images of Vasily Kandinsky’s works, one would not guess that this great pioneer of abstract art was a great lover of cats: in fact, there is only one woodcut from 1907 in which a feline is depicted. Yet Kandinsky was very fond of his kitten, whose name was Vaska: one photo shows him in his backyard, with the cat in his arms.

5. Georgia O’Keeffe

The great American painter was a dog lover, but she did not disdain cats, and in several of her letters she describes her passion for felines. “We got a cat,” she wrote in a letter sent in 1944 to Alfred Stieglitz, “it is a very nice, delicate, beautiful cat, a rather dark Siamese, so now we have the cat.” That is what is portrayed, with its little eyes closed, in this photograph.

6. Paul Klee

That between Paul Klee and cats was a love that began in childhood: even as a child there were cats in the family. The kitty Klee was most fond of was named Bimbo: a long-haired, white cat who followed him everywhere. “Paul Klee loves cats,” Nina Kandinsky would write in her memoirs, recalling how Klee’s cat would always wander into his studio in Dessau, looking out the window.

7. Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt was a great lover of cats, and one of his most famous photographic portraits, taken in 1911 by Moritz Nähr, depicts him precisely together with a cat, one of the many that crowded his Vienna studio on Josefstädterstraße. Obviously these cats created great chaos in the studio, and an art critic of the time, Arthur Roessler, had occasion to report this curiosity in one of his writings: “Once I was sitting with Klimt and rummaging through a pile of papers, surrounded by eight or ten cats meowing and purring, playing quarrel with each other, to the point that the rustling studio papers were flying, and then I asked him, puzzled, why he tolerated that the cats, with their oddities, were ruining hundreds of the most beautiful drawings. With a smile, Klimt replied, ’No, my friend, even if they crumple and tear this or that piece of paper, it doesn’t matter; they only pee on others and, you know, it’s the best fixer!’”

8. Pierre Bonnard

A white cat is the subject of one of Pierre Bonnard’s most famous paintings, Le chat blanc precisely, kept at the Musée d’Orsay. However, there are several cats that appear in the French painter’s works, and there is even a photograph that depicts him precisely together with a kitten.

9. Balthus

An artist whose output abounds with paintings where cats are depicted is Balthasar KÅ‚ossowski de Rola, better known as Balthus. Cats are often enigmatic, becoming almost stand-ins for the artist, his ideal portraits (so much so that one of his self-portraits from 1935 is entitled The King of Cats. A passion, Balthus’s for cats, born from an early age, when at the age of eight, in 1916, he had posed with his kitten for a watercolor of his mother. And three years later he would execute 40 pen drawings imagining the adventures of a stray cat named Mitsou.

10. Ai Weiwei

Among contemporary artists, perhaps the most passionate about felines is China’s Ai Weiwei. He owns several (many of them rescued from around here and there), which constantly accompany his work and often become subjects of his works. “My cats think they are so important,” he said in an interview with The New York Times. “They always want to sleep in the middle of my bed or stand on my shoulder, and I really have to negotiate with them. But they give me so much joy.” His love for cats is a reflection of what he experienced: “When I was growing up in Shihezi, China, in the 1960s, you didn’t see families with pets, because of course communism is against private property, and any kind of compassion then was considered objectionable. Animals were valued only as tools of productivity, as in the case of donkeys and horses, or for their meat. [...] When I built my studio in Beijing in 2000, however, the first thing I wanted was for there to be some life there. I bought a cat, the first cat, and took care of it for 20 years.”

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