Claude Ruiz-Picasso, the youngest son of artist Pablo Picasso, died last Thursday in Switzerland.
His death was confirmed by his lawyer, Jean-Jacques Neuer. No cause of death was immediately provided.
Ruiz-Picasso was a photographer and film director who also ran his father’s estate, managing it from 1989 until last month, when he gave control to his younger sister, Paloma.
He and Paloma were the children Picasso had with French artist Françoise Gilot, who died earlier this year at 101 years old. The senior Picasso had two other children: Paul, the product of his first marriage to dancer Olga Khokhlova, who died in 1975, and Maya, whose mother was model Marie-Thérèse Walter, who died last year.
Françoise Gilot, Portrait of Claude Picasso
When Pablo Picasso died in 1973 at the age of 91, he left behind about 45,000 works of art; 1,885 paintings, 1,228 sculptures, 7,089 drawings as well as tens of thousands of prints, thousands of ceramic works, and 150 sketchbooks.
A court-appointed auditor charged with evaluating all of Picasso’s assets estimated the artist’s was worth between $100 and $250 million – that’s $530 million to $1.3 billion today.
And yet Picasso did not leave a will. The probate in court took 6 years to settle and cost $30 million in legal fees.
Richard Avedon, Claude Picasso
Picasso, 40 years Gilot’s senior, had cut off contact with her and her children in 1964 after she published a memoir about their life together.
In the ‘70s, Ruiz-Picasso and Paloma successfully sued to be legally recognized his legitimate children after a French court ruled that Picasso had confirmed his paternity by dedicating several paintings to the pair, according to The New York Times.
In the mid-90s, Claude Picasso created the Paris-based Picasso Administration, which manages the heirs’ jointly owned property, controls the rights to exhibitions and reproductions of Picasso’s works, and authorizes merchandising licenses for the artists’ work, name, and image.
The 33-volume catalogue of Picasso’s work by Christian Zervos.
The Picasso Administration tracked down forgeries, illegal use of Picasso’s name, and stolen works of art. Picasso was the most prolific and most photograph artist in the world and in the 47 years since his death, he’s been the most reproduced, most exhibited, most stolen, and most faked artist of all time.
Ruiz-Picasso is survived by his wife, Madame Sylvie Picasso, and two children, Jasmin and Solal with an estate of $70+ million, unlike his father, he very likely had a will.
Claude Picasso was 76.
(Photos, YouTube, Sotheby’s, Picasso Admin; via The Daily Beast, Celebrity Net Worth)
