{"id":93761,"date":"2025-07-26T09:42:21","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T09:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/93761\/"},"modified":"2025-07-26T09:42:21","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T09:42:21","slug":"picasso-as-papa-and-how-childhood-toys-became-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/93761\/","title":{"rendered":"Picasso as Papa and how childhood toys became art"},"content":{"rendered":"

The two toy cars the boy was given by his father were transformed into a monkey sculpture even before he had a chance to play with them. Then again, papa was Picasso.<\/p>\n

For Claude Picasso, such were the setbacks and glories of growing up with the artist, a theme explored in an exhibition in Barcelona curated by Paloma, his sole surviving child, and dedicated to Claude, her brother.<\/p>\n

A version of Baboon and Young, the 1951 sculpture, is among a hundred paintings, drawings and objects on show at the Museu Picasso. Many are on loan from the family\u2019s collections and have never before been seen by the public.<\/p>\n

\"Bronze<\/p>\n

Picasso\u2019s Baboon and Young sculpture<\/p>\n

\"Illustration<\/p>\n

Fran\u00e7oise Gilot\u2019s La Lecci\u00f3n de Lectura, or The Reading Lesson<\/p>\n

The exhibition offers a rare insight into Picasso as a father, his intimate family life and his relationship with two of his four children, Claude, who died in 2023, and his younger sister, Paloma, as well as their mother, Fran\u00e7oise Gilot, whose paintings are also on show.<\/p>\n

\u201cClaude and I grew up in an environment that was both ordinary and extraordinary,\u201d Paloma, 76, said. \u201cMy father was never one to separate the \u2018important\u2019 from the \u2018everyday\u2019. To him, every moment was an opportunity for creativity.\u201d<\/p>\n

The exhibition, Growing Up Between Two Artists, which runs until October 26, demonstrates how Picasso immersed himself in his children\u2019s world by making them toys, as well as sketches and paintings for them and of them. <\/p>\n

The works on show vary from a primitive toy bus, made of painted wood with Evian water bottle tops for wheels, to terracotta doves and pencil and felt-tip pen drawings of musketeers.<\/p>\n

\"Illustration<\/p>\n

One of Picasso\u2019s musketeers<\/p>\n

The latter was an obsession of Claude as a child. \u201c[Picasso] cut out a lot of musketeers. They were on a piece of paper that had been folded several times that we would cut out to create a row of musketeers,\u201d Claude once said. \u201cThey were Picasso\u2019s musketeers, but not completely his because they were drawn on by the different children: Paloma \u2026 and me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The doves recall Picasso\u2019s own childhood in Malaga when his father, Jos\u00e9 Ruiz, who was a drawing teacher, taught his young son the principles of art. Ruiz admired birds and specialised in painting them.<\/p>\n

\"Pablo<\/p>\n

Picasso and Gilot teach Claude and Paloma drawing in 1953<\/p>\n

EDWARD QUINN<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted the exhibition to convey the sense of joy and freedom that permeated our days in Vallauris,\u201d said Paloma, referring to a town in the southeast of France where they lived. Picasso\u2019s love affair with Gilot lasted a decade from 1943, when he was 63 and she was 23.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Revealed: the secret portrait beneath a Picasso painting<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

In 1952 Picasso made Four Shadow Silhouettes, using India ink wash on paper to capture the profiles of the four family members for a poster for a local ceramics exhibition. It echoes the impromptu theatrical performances that the family staged in private. <\/p>\n

\"Illustration<\/p>\n

\u201cPapa Picasso had this magical ability to transform the mundane into something poetic. He loved to play with costumes, hats and masks \u2014 he was a master of improvisation,\u201d Paloma said.<\/p>\n

One of the show\u2019s highlights, an oil painting from 1948, shows Claude dressed in a traditional Polish costume, a gift his father brought back from Poland, where he attended a communist conference. Picasso always kept the portrait in his studio or in his homes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis large painting in an unusual format depicts him almost life-size, looking at us scornfully, holding a ball and wearing a beautiful embroidered jacket \u2026 [it] reminds us of Matryoshka dolls, the symbols of Russian folk art which Picasso was particularly fond of,\u201d it says at the exhibition. <\/p>\n

\"Illustration<\/p>\n

The show is a bittersweet tribute because it also refers to the couple\u2019s 1953 separation, when Gilot left Picasso, who had numerous affairs and still had a legal wife. She took the children with her and the break-up prompted him to set out to destroy Gilot\u2019s artistic career.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The dangers of dating Pablo Picasso<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

The publication of Gilot\u2019s highly successful 1964 memoir Life with Picasso, which included revelations about his abuse and misogyny, stung Picasso and led to him damaging his relationship with Claude and Paloma. <\/p>\n

The exhibition includes an excerpt that states: \u201cPaloma rarely bothered me. She was, as Pablo often pointed out, an ideal girl-child. \u2018She\u2019ll be a perfect woman,\u2019 Pablo said. \u2018Passive and submissive. That\u2019s the way all girls should be. They ought to stay asleep just like that until they\u2019re 21.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

However, Paloma recalled him lovingly. \u201cI remember him as being very affectionate, inspiring and fun,\u201d she said. \u201cWe found him in his bathtub, where he lathered his face to draw funny things with his fingers. After the separation, we spent all our holidays with him.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The two toy cars the boy was given by his father were transformed into a monkey sculpture even…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":93762,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[648,1032,1033,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-93761","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-design","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114918886380431624","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}