Picasso’s DIY ‘How To Draw’ Books For Daughter Go On Public View For First Time
Pablo Picasso in 1912. Image via RMN-Grand Palais / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
An intimate look into Pablo Picasso’s relationship with his children—in particular, his eldest daughter Maya Ruiz-Picasso—can be seen in a collection of sketchbooks recently uncovered by his granddaughter. The touching memorabilia will go on show for the first time at Maya Ruiz-Picasso, daughter of Pablo exhibition at The Musée Picasso in Paris.
The exercise books are filled with cheery illustrations teaching Maya, then five to seven years old, how to draw and color. In it are pictures of animals, clowns, and birds, including an exercise of eagle drawings that Picasso created without lifting his pencil from the paper to express the beauty of form and pure line.
According to the Guardian, which published some of these illustrations, Pablo Picasso also drew a couple of sketches of a fox hankering for grapes, alluding to The Fox and the Grapes fable, and Maya colored into them.
Found: the 'how to draw' books Pablo Picasso created for his daughter https://t.co/kuVjPNdhbR
— The Guardian (@guardian) June 11, 2022
The young daughter also marked the number 10 on one of his circus artworks to convey how much she liked it.
Pablo Picasso had inherited his artistic sensibilities from his own father, and wished to impart them to his kin.
Maya Ruiz-Picasso is now 86 years old, and when her daughter Diana Widmaier-Ruiz-Picasso—an art historian—unearthed the sketchbooks from storage, her childhood memories came rushing in. Widmaier-Ruiz-Picasso describes the discovery as “very moving” as it helped humanize one of the most celebrated artists of all time.
The exhibition, which Widmaier-Ruiz-Picasso is co-curating, will run through December 31, 2023.
[via The Guardian, cover image via RMN-Grand Palais / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)]
