Paloma Ruiz-Picasso, the last of Pablo Picasso’s four children, has been appointed administrator of the estate who manages the rights related to the artist and his work, replacing her brother Claude, their lawyer, Me Jean-Jacques Neuer. Businesswoman, fashion icon, creator of perfumes, accessories and jewelry, Paloma Picasso, 74, is the daughter of the Spanish painter and French artist Françoise Gilot, who died in June. The arrival of this personality at the head of the most important artistic succession in the world is “very important for the art world”, commented Me Neuer. The Picasso Estate belongs jointly to Claude and Paloma Picasso and to the grandchildren of the painter Marina Picasso, Bernard Ruiz-Picasso as well as Olivier, Diana and Richard Widmaier-Picasso.
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This organization holds the monopoly of copyright and reproduction rights of Picasso’s works, as well as personality rights, moral rights and trademark rights. It issues authentication certificates and fights against fakes, regularly taking legal action. In recent years, his great feat of arms has been the recovery of 271 Picasso drawings held by a former electrician of the artist, who claimed to have received them as a gift from his widow. In 2019, after nine years of proceedings, the former craftsman and his wife – then defended by Éric Dupond-Moretti, now Minister of Justice in France – were sentenced for concealment to two years suspended. Claude Ruiz-Picasso, 76, who had been its administrator since 1989, wanted to retire and leave his place to his sister, said the lawyer.
Fifty years after his death in April 1973, the author of Guernica and the Demoiselles d’Avignon continues to fascinate: museums around the world, particularly in France and Spain, have programmed around fifty exhibitions this year dedicated to him.
