Claude Ruiz Picasso, the artist’s son and manager of the Picasso estate, has died

Claude Ruiz Picasso, Pablo Picasso’s youngest son, has died on the age of 76.

Because the long-term supervisor of his father’s property, Claude was the holder of the Picasso copyright. He was additionally instrumental in organising Picasso Celebration 1973-2023, a compendium of fifty exhibitions of Picasso’s work, proven in cultural establishments throughout Europe and the US over the course of 2023 to mark 50 years since Pablo Picasso’s loss of life.

Claude handed over the administration of the property in July of this yr to Paloma Ruiz Picasso, his youthful sister. He was initially appointed, by a court docket, because the administrator of the Picasso property in 1989.

Claude’s relationship along with his father ranged from at instances strained to estranged. In 1970, when he was 22, and three years earlier than his father’s loss of life, Claude launched a authorized battle as a way to be recognised as his father’s official son and authorized inheritor. Claude and Paloma finally gained a four-year battle and have become the official heirs of the Picasso property in 1974, a yr after their father died (with out leaving a will).

The property stays probably the most precious collections within the artwork world, numbering round 45,000 items. On the time of Pablo Picasso’s loss of life in 1973, the property was estimated to be price £650m.

Within the business artwork world, Pablo’s artwork stays incessantly topic to forgery, faux usages and legal buying and selling. Within the copyright and trademark sectors, the Picasso property has typically set authorized precedents by way of its willingness to pursue authorized motion in opposition to counterfeit, unlawful replica and forgery circumstances as a way to shield the artist’s legacy.

Claude was the son of Pablo and the French painter Françoise Gilot, who additionally died in June of this yr on the age of 101.

Throughout the mythology of Pablo Picasso’s life, Gilot is also known as the one girl that left him. Pablo tried to legally cease Gilot, 40 years his junior, from publishing a memoir of her life which detailed her expertise of being a relationship with him, together with testimonies of abuse, together with an event when he held a lit cigarette in opposition to her cheek. The e book was finally printed in 1964, and is titled Life with Picasso. Pablo severed contact with each Claude and Ruiz after the publication of the e book, and by no means contacted them once more.

Earlier than his appointment because the supervisor of the Picasso property, Claude was an artist in his personal proper. Residing in New York, US, he labored briefly as an assistant to the photographer Richard Avedon, earlier than seeing his personal pictures printed in vogue magazines together with Vogue and Time Life.

Claude’s stewardship of the property was typically animated by non-public conflicts with Pablo’s second spouse Jacqueline Roque and Claude’s half-sibling Maya Widmaier-Picasso (the daughter of the French mannequin Marie-Thérèse Walter), who at instances fought for a slice of Pablo’s legacy in feuds that typically concerned very public barbs. Takings from the property are actually break up between all of Pablo’s descendants.

Claude’s loss of life, in Geneva, Switzerland, was confirmed by his lawyer on Thursday 24 August, in an announcement to Agence France-Presse. He didn’t give the reason for loss of life.

Claude Riuz Picasso is survived by his spouse, Sylvie Vautier, and two youngsters. The reason for his loss of life is unknown.