Maya Ruiz-Picasso, daughter of the Spanish painter, died on Tuesday at the age of 87.
She had illuminated the life and work of the painter, the French Ministry of Culture wrote on Wednesday in reaction to the death. We owe unique works to her complicity, the press release continued.
Maya Ruiz-Picasso was the daughter of the Spanish artist and Marie-Thérèse Walter, 28 years his junior, whom he had met in 1927.
Maya Ruiz-Picasso was born on September 5, 1935. She was not Picasso’s first child, but she strongly influenced him. None of her three half-siblings spent as much time with Picasso as she did.
Between 1938 and 1939 alone, he painted 14 portraits of her, including “Maya with her doll,” “Maya with boat,” “Maya in a sailor suit.”
The unique father-daughter relationship is currently the subject of a double exhibition at the Picasso Museum in Paris. At the end of September, Maya Ruiz-Picasso had donated several works by her father, who died in 1973, to the French state, including a portrait of her mother and “Little Girl With A Pacifier Under A Chair.”
