Pablo Picasso's eldest daughter died on Tuesday, December 20, 2022
Maya Widmaier-Picasso, Pablo Picasso's oldest daughter, died of lung problems on Tuesday, December 20. She was 87 years old. The actor Olivier Widmaier-Picasso, who is her son, said that the news was true and that she "died peacefully, surrounded by her family," which included himself, his sister Diana Widmaier-Picasso, who is an art historian, and their father Pierre Widmaier, who was Maya's husband. Diana is in charge of two shows at the Picasso Museum in Paris that are about Maya's life and collection. These shows run until the end of the month. The first shows the works Maya gave to the French government last year instead of paying inheritance tax. After her father died in 1973, she chose six paintings, a sculpture, a sketchbook, and a tribal statue to finish the huge collection that became the Musée Picasso. Olivier says, "She was very attached to the idea that her inheritance should go to a museum. So I've always thought of the French public collection as my "little brother." Diana says, "It was a duty for my mother." "She cared very much about Picasso's work. She learned a lot about his work and put together a lot of archives."
Portraits of Maya painted by her father are the focus of an exhibition in Paris
The portraits that Maya's father painted of her in the 1930s are the focus of the second museum show, which is about their private life. One of them had been stolen from Diana's apartment in 2007 during a break-in, but the French art police caught the thieves and got it back. The exhibit also has a lot of drawings, photos, poems, and other things that show how they lived. Diana says, "He even kept pieces of her nails and hair as a charm to protect her." Another show at the Musée Montmartre in Paris is about Picasso's first wife, Fernande Olivier. This is a first. These shows are part of a growing movement to show how important women were in Picasso's life. The media and some authors, especially after the #MeToo movement, have called the painter a predator. But a more complex picture is also coming to light, showing that behind the rough exterior was a loving father who cared a lot about his children.
"He was Pablo Picasso! "Of course, we can question how he treats women," says Olivier about his grandfather "but it needs to be written down and put in the right place. He was not at all the monster that some people say he was."
Maya was an expert in authenticating her father's works
Maya was a bigger-than-life person who could tease French President Macron at the opening of an art show by saying, "I could be your mother, you know." She was born on September 5, 1935, in Paris, which was eight years after Picasso met Marie-Thérèse Walter. She was 17 when he was 45. Her childhood was hard. She once said that because she was an illegitimate child, her birth and the first years of her life had to be "kept secret." Maria de la Concepción was her name, after Pablo's sister who died when he was 14. But she couldn't say the name, so people called her Maya. She said, "It took me almost 60 years to get the name in public records." Olivier says, "As a Picasso expert, my mother checked the authenticity of tens of thousands of works." She stopped about six years ago, when a cataract made her eyesight worse. In 2012, Picasso's son Claude and the other heirs formed a group called "Picasso Authentification." She didn't like it and told them, "You know, I'm not dead!"
After she authenticated drawings that had been stolen from Picasso and his family by handymen, they had different ideas about how important provenance was. They thought that authenticity was the only thing that mattered. Diana says, "She was free, and I think all the skills she learned helped her keep living with her dad while still being herself." After her death, a new generation of one of the most powerful families in the art world will take over.
Jean Dubreil