G rowing up in the shadow of the greatest artist of the 20th century necessitates a certain quality of character. The second son of Pablo Picasso, Claude Ruiz Picasso had this character in abundance. Not only was he a dedicated and conscientious steward of his father’s legacy, but a successful photographer, cinematographer, movie director, visual artist, graphic designer, vintage racing car driver and businessman. Following his father’s death in 1973, Claude successfully oversaw the protracted legal complexities that included Picasso’s heirs and the French government, which led to the formation of the Picasso Administration which managed the richest artistic legacy of the 20th century and which Claude headed up until earlier this year, when his sister Paloma took over.
‘I can say that he [Picasso] was a good father and a fantastic artist’
- Claude Picasso
Born in May 1947, in Boulogne-Billancourt, France, to Picasso and Françoise Gilot, elder brother to Paloma, Claude was known as Claude Gilot until the age of 12. His babyhood was spent on the Cote d’Azur, where his father was enjoying a fruitful creative period (best articulated in La Joie de Vivre, painted in 1946 at the Château Grimaldi in Antibes), embracing the joys of family life with Françoise, and Claude’s younger sister Paloma.
Remembered by his mother as being an extremely creative child, Claude entranced his parents, inspiring artworks by both and giving his father an opportunity to indulge his innate sense of playfulness and fun, as seen in the assemblage-based sculptures he produced during Claude’s childhood. These tended to reflect family, nurture, and care, such as 1950’s Femme Enceinte (Pregnant Woman), Chèvre (She-Goat) and Femme à la Pousette (Woman With Pushchair).
In 1951, when Claude was four, he was gifted some toy cars by art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Claude was fond of smashing his toys to pieces with a hammer, so Picasso wisely removed two, cast them in bronze and created La Guenon et Son Petit, a comically grotesque depiction of an ape (not entirely dissimilar to the bull-necked, bald, 70-year old Picasso at the time of making) cradling a young child.
‘I can say that he [Picasso] was a good father and a fantastic artist,’ Claude Picasso recalled in 2018. ‘When you have such a father, and he’s the only one you have, you don’t pay too much attention. He’s just your father. As I grew up, I would sometimes pick up on things that were perhaps a little bit different from the way other people reacted or behaved: sometimes it was amusing and pleasant and sometimes, for a child, a bit confusing…’
Claude moved to New York in 1967 where he developed his passion for photography at the studio of Richard Avedon, where he spent a year as an assistant. Claude’s flair for photojournalism quickly garnered commissions for Time Life, Vogue, and the Saturday Review magazines. Early shoots, however, did not always go well – Claude remembered a less-than-thrilling early commission by Life magazine in the 1968, to photograph the decidedly unglamorous British folk-rock group, The Incredible String Band, which involved rural Welsh retreats, lots of mud and very little action. ‘It wasn’t so incredible’ he mused later. He also found the time to attend the Actors Studio, in New York, make a documentary about sculptor Richard Serra, and even designed his own line of furniture, including carpets with Picasso-style designs.
Upon the artist’s death in 1973 Claude and his siblings took on the Herculean task of bringing order and fair division to Picasso’s archive, which held approximately 45,000 works. It was a complex undertaking. Discussions were held with the French government over a period of six years, ultimately leading to the creation of the Picasso Museum in Paris.
In 1989, a French court appointed Claude the ultimate administrator of the Picasso estate, via the Succession Picasso organisation, a role he held until July 2023, when his sister Paloma took over. On June 29, 2011, he was awarded the Legion d’Honneur for his work as photographer, cinematographer, and visual artist, as well as his efforts to administer his father's heritage. The peroration, by then Minister of Culture Frédéric Mitterrand, began with a rueful acknowledgment by the Minister of the pressures of having a famous father, before going on to make especial acknowledgment of Claude’s efforts to establish the National Picasso Museum, and acknowledging Claude’s work towards the renovation of the Hôtel Salé – ‘bringing all your knowledge of the work, facilitating relations between the curators of the museum, architect Roland Simounet and the administration of the Ministry of Culture and the various members of the Picasso Estate.’
Banner Image: Claude Picasso son of legendary artist Pablo Picasso and Francoise Gilot. (Photo by © Richard Melloul/Sygma/CORBIS/Sygma via Getty Images)
