An exhibition of never-before-seen works by the Spanish master, Pablo Picasso, bequeathed by his eldest child, Maya Ruiz-Picasso, in 2021 is on in Paris.
The show reportedly features nine major works by the artist and personal family items dating from 1895 to 1971. The selection includes drawings, paintings, photographs, ephemera, a colouring in book, and an adorable how-to-paint book that the artist and his lover Marie-Thérèse Walter made for Maya.
According to Attnet, the exhibition, “Maya Ruiz-Picasso, Daughter Of Pablo,” was co-curated by Picasso Museum curator Emilia Philippot and Maya’s daughter Diana Widmaier-Ruiz-Picasso, who discovered drawings and sketchbooks by chance while going through storage. She showed her mother, who is now 86, and she remembered making the drawings with her father.
Maya recalled that time, paper, and pencils were in short supply then. “Who has never heard it said when looking at a canvas by Picasso, ‘A child could have done that!’” Diana wrote in the book accompanying the show. “Many of the artistic revolutions of the 20th century were greeted with mockery and scandal, it is true, but in Picasso’s case there is a hint of truth in that judgment. As Maya, his first daughter, recalls, ‘the mystery of life, and therefore of childhood, always filled that father of mine with interest.’”
