Claude Ruiz-Picasso, who, after a authorized struggle that established him and his sister Paloma as authentic heirs to their father, the nice artist Pablo Picasso, managed his huge property for greater than 30 years, died on Thursday in Switzerland. He was 76.
His dying was confirmed by his lawyer, Jean-Jacques Neuer, who didn’t give a trigger or say the place in Switzerland he died.
Claude and Paloma had been the youngsters of Picasso and Françoise Gilot, a French painter 40 years his junior, who, after a protracted and stormy relationship, left him in 1953. Picasso didn’t deny that he was Claude and Paloma’s father, however he was so indignant when Ms. Gilot revealed a memoir, “Life With Picasso,” in 1964, that he lower off contact along with her and their kids. Ms. Gilot died in June.
In 1970, Claude Ruiz-Picasso and Paloma Picasso sued in a French court docket to be acknowledged as Picasso’s authentic kids. French legislation modified in 1972 to provide kids born out of wedlock rights of inheritance; the siblings gained a court docket ruling in March 1974, virtually a yr after their father’s dying, to additional set up their legitimacy. The court docket mentioned that Picasso had confirmed his paternity by dedicating work to them.
By then, Claude Ruiz-Picasso had been dwelling in New York Metropolis since 1967. Over the subsequent seven years, he studied on the Actors Studio; labored as an assistant to the style and portrait photographer Richard Avedon; and commenced a profession as a photojournalist.
Mr. Picasso’s work finally appeared in Vogue, Saturday Evaluate, Time and Life magazines. He mentioned that he had been impressed by the photojournalist David Douglas Duncan, who spent years making a pictorial document of his father.
“Duncan was at all times round, clicking away, and I assumed, oh, this may be an attention-grabbing occupation,” Mr. Ruiz-Picasso informed the Picasso biographer John Richardson in a 2019 interview for Gagosian Quarterly, an art-world journal revealed by the worldwide gallery proprietor Larry Gagosian. “Once I was about 17,” he added, “he very kindly gave me an expert digital camera.” It was a Nikon.
Claude Ruiz-Picasso was born on Could 14, 1947, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. Paloma was born two years later. His half-siblings had been Paulo, the son of Picasso’s marriage to the ballet dancer Olga Khokhlova, and Maya Ruiz-Picasso, whose mom was the mannequin Marie-Thérèse Walter. Paulo Picasso died at 54 in 1975. Maya Ruiz-Picasso died final yr at 87.
In 1989, after six years of squabbling amongst all Picasso’s heirs together with his widow, Jacqueline Roque, over the distribution of the 1000’s of artworks he left behind and the communal proper to use his title commercially, a French court docket appointed Mr. Picasso the property’s administrator.
“I by no means anticipated or desired to have any sort of function like this, or have any affect over my father’s legacy,” he informed Mr. Richardson. “So due to the Picasso Administration, little by little, I needed to stop pictures. Not rapidly however little by little.”
Because the administrator, Mr. Picasso handled copyright and trademark points, made licensing offers, battled with forgers and produced reproductions.
“I believe he did an unimaginable job as a steward of his father’s legacy,” Mr. Gagosian, whose galleries have offered quite a few Picasso reveals, mentioned in a cellphone interview. “He took it critically and was extraordinarily strict about how the Picasso picture was dealt with.”
Considered one of Mr. Picasso’s licensing offers concerned promoting his father’s title and signature in 1998 to PSA Peugeot-Citroen, the French automaker. Marina Picasso, Paulo’s daughter, challenged the deal in court docket. She informed a French newspaper, “I can’t tolerate that the title of my grandfather and of my father be used to promote one thing as banal as a automobile.”
In line with a 2016 Vanity Fair article in regards to the Picasso artwork empire, Citroen paid a reported $20 million, plus royalties, for the deal, and had offered some 3.5 million Picasso cars on the time.
In July, Mr. Ruiz-Picasso was changed as estate administrator by Paloma Picasso, a famend jewellery designer.
He’s survived by his spouse, Sylvie Vautier Picasso, and his sons, Solal and Jasmin.
In 2018, Mr. Ruiz-Picasso criticized the Musée Picasso in Paris for lending out too lots of its Picasso works to the various exhibitions scheduled in France that yr. He mentioned that a few of these works had been fragile and shouldn’t be used to bulk up the reveals.
“Many individuals count on to make discoveries that, on the finish of the day, they don’t make, and they don’t seem to be happy with what’s on supply,” he informed The Occasions of London. “Among the many exhibitions held, there’s a load that aren’t obligatory.”
In response, Laurent Le Bon, the chairman of the museum, mentioned: “My goal is to make sure that the museum will not be a tomb. As a substitute of the identical previous exhibitions on Picasso and ladies, Picasso and love, and Picasso and light-weight, we try to develop new concepts.”