Pablo Picasso ‘saw the joy and also the pain of life’

When artist Pablo Picasso died on April 8, 1973, he left a legacy of millions – but no will. It took a full seven years to list and catalog all the paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints and texts he created throughout his life – around 150,000 works. Legal disputes continued for the next 50 years, but today the largest single collection of his works can be found at the Picasso Museum in Paris.

One of his legal heirs is Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, Picasso’s grandson, who was 13 at the time of the artist’s death. His father, Paulo Ruiz-Picasso, died in 1975. Twenty years ago, Bernard Ruiz-Picasso and his mother donated part of their private collection to found the Picasso Museum in Malaga, Spain-Picasso’s birthplace.

DW met the art collector in Paris.

DW: When did you realize that your grandfather was one of the greatest artistic geniuses of the 20th century?

Bernard Ruiz-Picasso: I realized that he was an important person before his death in 1973.

As a child, I used to visit him in the south of France. He was surrounded by many friends and had a big house full of art. He was very busy.

I was young so I didn’t really realize how important he was on an artistic level, but in his life, I realized that people paid attention to him. He was not treated like a carpenter or an electrician. He was different.

How do you remember him? Was he a kind grandfather?

When I was young, times were different. Children were not allowed to interrupt adults. When I was playing on the living room floor and he was talking to other adults, sometimes he would call me to sit with him or show me something and take me in his arms like grandparents do.

You founded the Picasso Museum in Malaga 20 years ago. How does this museum honor Picasso? And how will the 50th anniversary of his death be celebrated?

It is actually a coincidence that we are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Malaga museum and the 50th anniversary of Picasso’s death.

So let’s celebrate this institution with an update on where we are and try to prepare the museum for the future.

Museums and their visitors have changed a lot in the last 20 years. It’s a long process, things are slow in a museum, but we really are in a moment where museums all over the world are questioning their missions and we share these questions with other institutions.

Picasso spent his childhood in Malaga. How did those years influence his work?

There is no doubt that for any artist, their early years are highly influential. In the case of Picasso, you can really see all the colors of his childhood in his work, as they appear in his paintings: the orange, the yellow, the lemon. The colors of Malaga greatly influenced Picasso.

And his father was a very good artist, specializing in still life, called “Bodegones” in Spanish. He was a teacher at an arts school in Malaga which contributed to many artistic developments in architecture, design and applied arts. Pablo Picasso, or rather his father Pablo Ruiz, started life surrounded by culture and art.

And as a city, Malaga has changed a lot because of the Picasso Museum and also other artistic institutions. It has become an artistic city.

Picasso’s relationship with women is increasingly criticized today. Why did you once say in an interview that he was a feminist?

This is a quote taken out of context by a French journalist in a Spanish newspaper. But yes, I think the way he portrayed himself, but especially the way he portrayed women – as mothers, as lovers, as terrifying, hysterical characters – is extraordinary. In this context, an exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay about the blue and rose periods opened my eyes. There I learned to see his works in a new way. These early paintings depicted women who either had syphilis or were in prison completely starving. Picasso was always against tyranny and barbarism in all areas.

Did the painting “Guernica” mark your turning point as a political artist?

From a very young age, Picasso became involved with many different groups of people struggling to improve their living conditions.

“Guernica” is an example. He painted it on commission for the Spanish Pavilion during the Paris International Fair in 1937. But he also made paintings about the Korean War and, in the 1940s, he portrayed women maimed during World War II.

I think he was a very sensitive artist who saw the joy as well as the pain in life.

When Picasso died, it was difficult to share his property. You had to give a large share to the French state. How was it resolved then?

Picasso passed away in 1973. Then my father passed away two years later, unfortunately. And my half-sister Marina lost a brother who committed suicide in 1973. It was all very sad. That left six of us: Maya, Paloma, Claude, Jacqueline, Picasso’s widow, Marina and me. good system. I think it was Georges Pompidou who started it when he was president. Thus, the Picasso Museum in Paris gained a beautiful collection. The family also donated their private collection, including paintings by Cézanne, Matisse and all archives. So we gave them lots of documents that allowed them to reconstruct Picasso’s life and work.

He did many paintings of his grandmother. Do you own any of them?

I have some things from my grandmother. I worked for 10 years on translating my grandmother’s Russian correspondence. We organized an exhibition called “Olga and Picasso”, in Paris, Moscow, Malaga and Madrid. And we did a lot of research because we had no idea who Olga was. It’s a sad story from the civil war times. She came to Europe as a young ballerina in 1911 and met Picasso in 1917. With Picasso she led a dream life, almost like a little princess. But while Picasso became increasingly famous towards the end of World War II, she lost her entire family on the other side. They died in the civil war or in the army.

There are many commemorative Picasso exhibitions in 2023. Will you see them all?

I’m trying to figure out how to be in two places at once! No, I won’t see them all. But I want to travel a lot in 2023 because I think a lot of them are worth seeing. I think the two presidents of France and Spain had this idea of ​​ending this year of celebration at UNESCO in Paris. This will also be a statement for democracy.

Interview by Sabine Oelze and Susanne Luerweg. This article was originally written in German.