Paloma Picasso confesses to Nuccio Ordine

This interview is the faithful transcription of a conversation I had with Paloma Picasso on May 24 at the University of Calabria.

A classroom full of students, curious to learn about the artistic itinerary of the famous jewelry designer and, at the same time, eager to hear the story of the years spent with her father, Pablo Picasso.

Paloma does not like to talk about herself or her family.

She is very jealous of her intimate and affective life.

But her reluctance gave way to the call of friendship.

We met years ago in Sérifos (Greece), thanks to a mutual friend from Athens, Maria Embiricos, a lover of art and culture.

Since then, we have not lost sight of each other.

In these pages it is possible to find a testimony of how the life of a daughter may have been marked, for better or for worse,

Let's start with your personal relationship with art.

Did you like to draw when you were little?

Clear!

As a child, like my brother Claude, she drew a lot.

My mother tried to lower the expectations of those who were watching us by saying that, in her way, all children draw.

She knew very well that people, seeing us with a pencil and paper, expected us to have a future as artists.

It was not easy living in a house with dad Pablo and mom Françoise always with the brush in hand.

So at the age of 15 I was anxious about measuring myself with painting: Picasso's fame and his strong personality prevented me from approaching the palette.

I needed to find my way.

And then, thanks to jewelry, I entered the world of art for the first time…

It seems to me that your first success was born among the debris of the Paris Flea Market...

In the early 1970s he was working in Paris as an assistant to set designer Luc Simon.

I was asked to find a great necklace for the famous actress and singer Barbara.

In specialized stores I did not find anything really interesting.

So, rummaging through the stalls at the Marché aux Puces [Flea Market], I bought black velvet and rhinestones.

A line dedicated to the creations of Paloma Picasso appeared in an article about the show.

I knew that if she hadn't been Pablo's daughter, they would have ignored me.

But that opportunity was precious: in fact, shortly after, a friend of mine told me that a school had been created in Paris to learn how to create jewelry: there I had the opportunity to design and make jewelry.

I had found a personal way to express myself.

How did you come to collaborate with the prestigious

By chance.

In Venice she had met a painter who had a Saint Laurent store, with whom I later became friends.

After a few years, she went to live in New York.

And there he was hired at Tiffany's as an artistic director.

Precisely at that time, the company was looking for a new designer.

They invited four or five people for an interview, including me.

And, to my great joy, the choice fell on me.

Was it then that you started combining elements of street art with jewelry design?

I love strong, big and colorful things.

However, setting them into genuine jewelry became a serious problem due to their excessive cost.

I understood that I could create very beautiful jewelry, but it was not very salable.

That is why it was necessary to think of something easier.

In New York, in those years, urban art was widespread, although it received criticism because it dirty the walls.

I launched a challenge: transform what was considered "negative" into "positive" by including artistic-visual elements of this popular art in the design of jewelry made with gold and diamonds.

Then you traveled new paths with the launch of your

It was probably so.

In those years, all the friends he hung out with, from Yves Saint Laurent to Karl Lagerfeld, were creating his own perfume.

Thought I'd make one myself.

But my maternal grandfather had already established himself in the world of fragrances.

In fact, when she was little she used to enter Lafayette to visit the Gilot department (at that time she only had the last name Gilot, Ruiz Picasso arrived later).

Unfortunately, when I later created Paloma Picasso perfume, my grandfather had already died, but my grandmother saw in me the continuation of the family tradition.

Paloma Picasso, portrayed by Andy Warhol in 1973.Andy Warhol (© 2022 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; Inc. / VEGAP. Digital reproduction © Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía).

What happened, during your stay in New York, at night in the mythical

I was the youngest guest.

She was with Andy Warhol, who had an intense life of socializing, between cocktails, dinners and evenings in nightclubs.

She also ran the influential

magazine , dedicated to promoting auteur cinema over Hollywood production.

He met rich and famous people, different from the cenacle he frequented, to try to sell his portraits.

A lot of drugs circulated in Studio 54, but neither Warhol nor I took it;

we had the same fun.

But Warhol liked euphoric people who, when excited, lost control.

Despite having escaped death from the attacks, he still liked "madness" but, at the same time, it scared her...

Let's resume the thread of childhood memories.

Did your father encourage you to draw?

He smoked a lot, almost one cigarette after another.

And when the package was finished he would undo it and with the pieces of cardboard he would create tiny characters.

Thus, while he painted, I colored the figurines.

I remember with emotion those hours that we spent together: him with the brush and me with the colored pencils in hand.

A magical atmosphere, dominated by silence.

Pablo let me stay with him because she was a calm girl who didn't bother him.

I remember with emotion the hours we spent together, he with a brush and me with the colored pencils.

What was a typical day like at Picasso's house?

Claude and I saw him mostly on vacation.

The summer ones were the longest.

During the year we lived in Paris with our mother and in the summer we went to the south, to the houses of Cannes and Mougins.

Two and a half months always together.

In the morning she went shopping with Claude and Catherine, Jacqueline Roque's daughter.

Pablo woke up later: at eleven in the morning he had breakfast in bed and, meanwhile, read the mail.

The sheets were covered with letters sent from all corners of the world.

But, extraordinary detail, many envelopes did not have an address, they only said "For Pablo Picasso, France".

There were so many that I couldn't answer them all.

That is why he also hired a Spanish secretary who later filed them.

Dad never threw anything away.

And what do you remember about your mother, Françoise Gilot, also a painter?

Mom understood that Claude and I ran the risk of ending up hating art.

She took us to the museums, but always with great caution.

When she painted, so as not to impose her work on our attention, she would close the door.

But I, without her seeing me, spied on her from the balcony.

She was very proud to have such a creative mother.

And he probably would never have wanted an apple-pie-making mom.

Her creativity was also expressed in the invention of stories.

I think of the story of a girl who, playing with her brother, turns into a sphinx: she had named it

.

A way of alluding to my character: I was very quiet at home, while at school I talked too much.

Of course, I admired Dad (who was admired by everyone).

But I felt a special admiration for my mother, a "complicity" that has remained intact over time.

On November 26, she will be 101 years old…

How was Pablo Picasso's daughter welcomed at school?

It was not easy for me, because of the bad teachers.

I remember one who taught Latin and French.

Eight hours a week, never missing an opportunity to drop hints at Dad.

He hated Pablo and tried by all means to speak ill of him.

One day, while we were translating a passage from Julius Caesar about a battle, he insisted on specifying that the confrontation took place near the castle of Vauvenargues, whose walls were painted centuries later by a vagabond painter.

He was talking about my father.

That was the last straw.

But I did not protest, neither in class nor in private to the school director.

When I came back from the Easter holidays, I found out that the professor had died, hit by a car.

Hate didn't stop me from regretting it.

Fortunately, since I never wished him dead, I did not feel guilty.

After all,

, they had called me Dove, symbol of peace...

Precisely in 1949, on the occasion of the World Peace Congress and your birth, Picasso drew the famous

The original drawing is now in the Museum of Modern Art in Paris.

It is true that names condition the existence of the person who receives them.

That Dove is part of me and my life, to the point that I have also designed one for Tiffany, as a Christmas decoration.

Paloma Picasso, in the film 'Immoral Tales' by Valerian Borowczyc (1973).Argos Films (Argos Films)

There are several portraits of Paloma by Pablo Picasso.

Small

It's true.

, for example, although I was very young, I remember it well.

For years they have told me: "How lucky to have been portrayed by Picasso."

But I thought this supposed privilege was "normal."

From

I will never be able to forget the little fish that they had given me, perhaps for a birthday.

And then the family scenes: the paintings in which Claude and I are painted with my mother.

Precious moments of our life fixed on the canvas.

Picasso very often used discarded materials for his works.

And so much… Claude, in fact, paid the ultimate price.

Dad received many visitors.

And once my brother was given two toy cars.

But Claude, devoured by curiosity, disassembled the toys.

So when Pablo saw the remains of the two cars, he thought they were perfect for building a baboon.

My brother didn't like the idea at all.

And dad, with great irony, replied: "You have destroyed them and I, on the other hand, have transformed them into a wonderful work of art."

I believe that

It's true.

Papa found some abandoned objects on the street and immediately imagined a goat: the wicker basket for the belly, the palm fronds for the head and shoulder, and some ceramic remains for the udders, amalgamated with plaster and metal.

But he for a long time he lived at home with us a real goat…

Picasso, like a King Midas, transformed waste into art.

That was also the case with the famous

The bull's head

emerged from the handlebars and seat of an old bicycle.

It was not just any bull, but a bull that was impossible.

He was fascinated by bullfighting, he considered it a very particular ritualization of death.

In the bullfights, the bullfighters offered him the cape or dedicated the task to him.

In the family, however, my brother was not the only victim.

I was once given a pair of white canvas sneakers, and I was happy and proud to show them to Dad.

He took them and began to draw on them: I understood that he had lost them forever.

Speaking of bulls, one of the most famous is painted in

It's a huge painting that he did in the house on Rue des Grands-Augustins.

The canvas was so big that it was very difficult to get it to fit on the floor.

It is a work about which there has been a lot of discussion and about which we ourselves have talked about as a family.

Many questioned the choice of black and white.

There were many responses, but I think the black and white reporting he had seen in the newspapers at the time had an influence.

Dad painted a lot of black and white pictures.

Some 15 years ago, at the Guggenheim in New York, many gathered for an exhibition.

Dad could tell a story in black and white, without resorting to stronger colors...

Paloma Picasso and Nuccio Ordine, at the University of Calabria (Italy). Ángela Suárez

Eight years after the death of Picasso, in 1981, the

It was a peculiar trait of his character.

The most famous anecdote about

refers to some Nazi officials or diplomats who, upon seeing the reproduction of the painting, asked him if he had done it.

And dad replied: "No, you did it."

There was also another shock with the death of Stalin: Pablo painted him young and angered the leaders of the Communist Party.

But for him, the real Stalin was the one with the ideals of early youth.

Papa truly believed in the peace and freedom of the peoples.

The story of

has also left its mark on me.

For years I searched for the ideal apartment in Paris and in the end I found it exactly opposite the house where Pablo had painted it.

A painting that also inspired many musicians and poets...

Of course.

I think of Paul Éluard, a great friend of my father, who wrote a hot poem,

which was later set to music by Luigi Nono.

Our house was always full of writers, artists, poets.

Claude, for example, was lucky enough to hang out with Matisse, whom he considered a grandfather.

And although he was already very old, he continued to make wonderful

painting with very strong colors pieces of paper that he later cut out to paste them on the wall.

Those, for me, were the most beautiful works of Matisse.

Claude was so attracted to him—in fact, he was convinced that going into Matisse's room meant living in a painting—that as a boy he signed himself HM And sometimes when he praised Matisse at home, Dad would get angry and tell him. He asked: "And what about me?"

But Claude fearlessly replied that Henri was “a true painter”.

And what other friends frequented Picasso's house?

Jean Cocteau, for example, loved us very much, because he was fascinated by the curiosity of children, their desire to discover and know things.

And also Jacques Prévert, who often read us his poems.

Ours was a magical life, in which art, in its multiple expressions, was part of everyday life.

Many of these daddy's friends were like uncles to us.

We saw them especially in summer, because Pablo loved the sea and he spent a lot of time chatting on the beach.

Did you ever speak Spanish with your father?

Dad had a horrible Spanish accent, while Mom didn't.

Therefore, in the family, the language of communication was French.

Although many Spanish friends frequented our house, Papa always chatted with them in French.

But in the bullfights things were different.

When the matadors came to honor him, he would respond in Spanish.

And once he forced me to do it, to thank the bullfighter who had addressed me directly.

One of the interesting aspects of Picasso's poetics is his ability to compare himself with classical myths and with ancient Iberian and African art.

Among other things, his rewrites also affected masterpieces such as Velázquez's

For him, being modern also meant knowing the past.

Contrary to what is believed today —the false idea that true modernity consists of looking only at the present and the future— Dad was convinced that the past could be “rewritten”, as long as it was studied and known.

It is difficult to imagine the "new" without mastering what came before it.

He didn't like to do the same thing all the time.

He was against passive repetition of the rules.

For these reasons he was he a rebel in school?

Yes, he didn't like the limitations of the school.

He just wanted to draw his way.

My paternal grandfather was a painting teacher at an academy, first in Malaga and then in A Coruña and, finally, when my father was 15 years old, in Barcelona, ​​the most modern city in Spain, a city that at that time looked over Paris. and not to Madrid.

There dad attended the Institute of Fine Arts.

He was very young and his friends, some linked to the avant-garde, were much older than him.

So when they decided to go to Paris for the great fair of 1900, Dad followed them.

And after a series of round trips, he settled permanently in the French capital.

Your brother Claude has told me that in every corner of the world there is someone who uses the name of Picasso for commercial purposes...

It's a complicated business: we had to create a legal structure for it to protect it.

We have been forced to control all commercial uses.

It was necessary to defend his name from the free will of businessmen and companies.

In the East, where copyright does not exist and contracts are often not respected, we have had many difficulties.

Another big problem is that of attributions and falsifications.

Many new works by Picasso appear almost every year.

This is the other mission of our Picasso-Authentification.

Certify, with detailed studies, the authenticity of the works.

A separate chapter deserves some striking cases.

I think of the discovery of a series of drawings that later came to light at the home of an electrician and his cousin who was a driver.

It wasn't about gifts, as they claimed, but about thefts: Dad never gave anything without a dedication.

On the other hand, when counterfeits are discovered, the goal is to destroy them.

Of 100 supposed works sent to Claude to verify his authenticity, 98 are false.

Over time, my brother has gained a great deal of experience that allows us to recognize the techniques of various counterfeiters.

How do you live now the proximity of the fiftieth anniversary of his death?

What can I say?

I miss my dad very much and I feel that he is by my side in every moment of my life.

I am part of him and he is part of me.

The Picasso surname has marked and conditioned my existence.

And an anniversary does not change this perception.

What's more, the idea that we'll be talking about him for a whole year worries me a bit.

I have always wanted to enjoy my father and my mother in privacy.

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

Keep reading

I'm already a subscriber