Maya Widmaier-Picasso, the eldest daughter of the legendary artist Pablo Picasso, died on Tuesday 20 December in Paris, aged 87, from pulmonary complications. The news was confirmed by her son, the actor Olivier Widmaier-Picasso. He tells The Art Newspaper that she “died peacefully, surrounded by her family”, including himself, his sister the art historian Diana Widmaier-Picasso and their father Pierre Widmaier, husband to Maya.
The Picasso Museum in Paris is currently showing two exhibitions, curated by Diana, which are dedicated to Maya’s life and collection and which run until the end of the month. The first presents the works Maya offered last year to the French state as a “payment in lieu” for inheritance tax. She had selected six paintings, a sculpture, a sketchbook and a tribal statue, to complete the huge collection which founded the Musée Picasso after her father’s death in 1973. “She was very attached to the idea that her inheritance should go to a museum,” Olivier says, “so I always thought I had a ‘little brother’ called the French public collection.”
“For my mother it was a duty,” Diana says. “She was deeply attached to Picasso’s legacy. She became an expert of his oeuvre and gathered a great body of archives.” Picasso had complicated relationships with many of the women in his life—he either revered them or abused them, and typically carried on romantic relationships with several women at the same time.
Maya herself was a larger than life character, capable of teasing French President Macron during an exhibition opening with the quip: “I could be your mother, you know”. She was born in Paris on 5 September 1935, eight years after Picasso met Marie-Thérèse Walter. He was 45 and she was 17. Her early life was not easy. As an illegitimate child, Maya’s birth and first years of childhood had to be “kept secret” she once said.
“As an expert [on Picasso, my mother] authenticated thousands of works,” Olivier says. She stopped about 6 years ago when her eyesight began to fail because of a cataract.
“She was free, and I think all the expertise she developed was a way for her to continue living with her dad, with her own personality,” Diana says. Her death will now see the rise of a new generation of one of the most powerful families in the art world.
