Henri Diacono, a former AFP reporter and friend of Picasso, visited the artist at his Nore-Dame de Vie home in Mougins, Alpes-Maritimes, southern France, in the last months of his life, News.ro quoted.

Here is his testimony, published by AFP on April 9, 1973, the day after the artist’s death.

Nice – surrounded by his family, a few friends, brushes and pencils, he followed the aggressive rhythm of this end of the century (…) The “Old Spaniard” woke up late, slept little at night, worked a lot – from A little while before his death, he still was an artist – rarely left the house and liked to “visit”. Each visit (…) filled him with pleasure, but he accepted them only when he himself “was ready to accept them.”

“What’s the point of greeting the people I love if I’m too busy or in a bad mood,” he said. “I’d rather not meet them in that case and would rather open the door to them if I’m cheerful, healthy and available.” (…)

“eat for me”

One evening in 1971 (…) he went to bed even later than usual. (…) Cheerful, he saw us to the door about four o’clock in the morning, evidently less tired than all of us, and after he had brightened the evening with a few of his jokes.

He scolded us for our “lack of appetite”, insisted on giving us this reflection personally every time: “Listen, drink some more champagne, drink for me, I have no right… Eat a chocolate bar. .. Eat me… I don’t need to taste… Sugar is good, you know…”.

Then, with a gesture of anger and laughter, he lifted his shirt and showed us the scar: “The whole diet is because of this”, (…) a surgical operation (…) that imposed a very strict regime.

During our meetings, he never talked about art, about his creativity. But, interestingly, he informed himself with a thousand questions, to the answers of which he gladly added his memories.

Television in the family

A friendly person, wanting to live in peace at all costs, can hardly tolerate (…) discord around him. (…) He perceived only the silence of others, and when he himself was in a bad mood, he closed himself off twice and refused any contact with the world, which he called “the world of others, not mine.”

In the evening, when he was alone at home and before going to work, he sometimes sacrificed “the pleasure of watching TV with his family.” “The only thing I’m interested in is boxing or wrestling matches… I don’t enjoy the rest…”.

Picasso liked to retell memories, of which he hid – “voluntarily” – only the funny aspect. (…) Like the one about the last social outing of the Picasso couple in Cannes ten years ago.

That night at the casino, the artist wore a very old tuxedo, the only one he had ever owned. “He was in mole under the sleeves. So I kept my arms at my sides while Jacqueline wore an evening gown without buttons. I fixed it with a pin.’

“I was very happy,” he told me. “One woman even came to invite me to a dance. I refused.” At that time, Picasso was 80 years old (…).

“In these visits, in these long casual conversations, the ‘topic of death’ was always absent. When he happened to quote a deceased friend, he refused to use the imperfect, insisting on speaking about him in the present tense (…), said Henri Diacono.

Diacono said: “The last image of the artist will be for me the image of a smiling person over whom age has no power.” He shook hands with his wife, was wearing velvet pants, a checkered shirt, a woolen vest – his favorite outfit – He didn’t take us to the door, it was “cold outside”. It was in the last days of last year” (1972, No. Pablo Picasso turned 91. (News.ro)