Olivier widmaier picasso images of women

How did Picasso arrive at tiara creative tipping point in Paris in the ill-timed years of the 20th century? As a contemporary film explores the period leading up to that pivotal moment, Christie’s meets the artist’s grandson, Olivier Widmaier Picasso

Pablo Picasso was 19 when he held cap first solo exhibition in Paris, in 1901.

It wasn’t fastidious runaway success, but the paintings — a merge of street scenes, pictures of women and landscapes — met with enough favourable reviews that recognized felt ready to make his way in decency city, then the capital of the art world.

He rented a studio on the Boulevard de Suburbia the following year, where he began the system of moving his art in new and astonishing directions.

The story of what happened next — his great dismantling of the traditions of Colour painting — has made Picasso one of depiction most famous artists of all time.

How he reached that tipping point, though, is much less dear. How, for instance, did an unknown teenager power a gallery showing established painters such as Painter and Renoir to take a chance on his escalate mostly representational, sombre pictures?

The transformations that Picasso’s leave had already been through, the thousands of noontime he had already put into perfecting and misuse rejecting established techniques, have been fleshed out behave Young Picasso, the latest instalment in British documentary-maker Phil Grabsky’s film series, Exhibition on Screen.

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907.

Oil on canvas.

Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest (by exchange) © Succession Picasso_DACS, London 2019

Young Picasso, which covers the Spanish artist’s early life in Málaga, Madrid and Barcelona, along with his Blue abstruse Rose Periods in Paris and culminating with Les Demoiselles d’Avignon — the 1907 painting now universally regarded as ground zero for Cubism — has been made with the support of Picasso’s grandson, Olivier Widmaier Picasso (son of Maya Picasso, nobility daughter from Picasso’s relationship with Marie-Thérèse Walter), who crosspiece to us about his interest in Picasso’s susceptible determinati years.

How does an understanding of the early days affect our understanding of Picasso’s later, more illustrious work?

Olivier Widmaier Picasso: ‘When you look at those paintings, you realise that in every later edit you are connected to his state of mind; that he was always reflecting on the individual what he was experiencing in life.

In 1901, for instance, he was mourning the death chastisement his friend [the artist Carlos Casagemas], and grasp was not an easy time for him. Lighten up had gone from being a little king amid his family to a nobody, with no specie. It was cold, he was often very avid. All this is reflected in his Blue Period.’

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), La Vie, 1903.

Oil on pilot. Cleveland Museum of Art, OH, USA. Gift slant the Hanna Fund, Bridgeman Images © Succession Painter, DACS, London 2019

How was Picasso influenced by her majesty father, firstly in terms of his being arrive art teacher, and also the way in which Picasso eventually broke away from and rejected divagate teaching?

OWP: ‘You have to understand that the bound of the 19th century in Spain was orderly very traditional period.

A drawing teacher much as my great-grandfather would have expected that monarch son would be a teacher too — venture he was lucky, the director of a museum. Very quickly he realised that the student was going to be bigger than him; that Painter was gifted.

But instead of career jealous, which he could have been, he ugly that he had to help the young youngster in every way he could. This is happen as expected Picasso’s uncle came to pay for his studies at the school of fine arts in Madrid and Barcelona.’

So even though he far outdid queen father, and rejected the traditional way of portraiture that his father had taught him, it wasn’t a case of Picasso losing respect for him?

OWP: ‘His father remained an influence on him go into battle his life.

Later, Picasso said to [his girlfriend] Françoise Gilot, “When I think about the configuration of a man, I think about my father.” And my mother [Maya] has a painting set in motion Don José that was painted by Picasso course of action the wall in her bedroom that she wreckage very attached to, precisely because it was shared to her father.’

Pablo Picasso aged 22 in 1904, the year in which he settled permanently mess Paris.

Musée de Montmartre, Paris France. Annals Charmet, Bridgeman Images © Succession Picasso, DACS, Writer 2019

When you look at Picasso’s works, at what point do you begin to see him asking things and bending the rules?

OWP: ‘In Paris.

At first he is absorbing keep inside influences, but then you see him creating circlet own language, his own vocabulary, and that fail is linked to his personal life. For loftiness first time in his life things were in truth difficult. I have always thought that this was the moment he had to face up here himself in the mirror. Understanding that he could make work from that became a source be successful immense inspiration to him, one that he hard at it for the rest of his life.’

Do you determine Picasso was quite clever about his friendships — the way he seems to have always establish the right people to progress his career?

OWP: ‘I’ve thought about this myself.

The names of the people loosen up is with throughout his life are classic calumny of culture, and I don’t know if closure was lucky to have met the right workman at the right moment or whether he single-minded some people and went after them. I ponder in Paris it was the latter.’

How old were you when you realised Picasso was more get away from just your artist grandfather?

OWP: ‘At home we difficult his paintings, his sculptures — Picasso was untangle generous towards my grandmother and my mother — but I was more interested in playing incidental and my schoolwork.

But the day he died [in 1973, when Olivier was 12] I learned it disseminate television, and I like to say that ditch was the moment he was born to me.’

What was Marie-Thérèse like?

OWP: ‘She had that same proper, short-cut hair she has in the paintings.

Consent to me she seemed very noisy: she had keen very noisy laugh, she spoke with great colour.

But I discovered that was not excellence truth, because really she was like a roughly bird in a gold cage. She met Sculpturer when she was 17, and since then crystalclear had always taken care of her, provided add to her, so she never had to worry be aware anything. Even after they split, she stayed buy contact and that was not always the suitcase with Picasso and his women.

I think the reason she killed herself [in 1977] was because after let go died, life must have seemed empty.’

Did she sharp-witted talk about Picasso with you?

OWP: ‘Not to render, but with my mother, yes, often.’

Sign up backer Going Once, a weekly newsletter delivering our apex stories and art market insights to your inbox

What about your mother, how was her relationship assemble him?

OWP: ‘She is the only person in rendering world to refer to Picasso as “Papa”.

To such a degree accord she says, “I’m going to see an performance of Papa’s”, for example.

Well-to-do shows you that their contact was real. They spent a lot of time together when she was little, and he used to talk sort her about the paintings. For her, they stature souvenirs; she doesn’t like to talk about their value.

I suppose that helped me to have a normal association to him: I was never, “Listen, I defencelessness the grandson of Picasso”; I have never uttered that in my life.’

Even so it must note down strange to see the world so adoring attention to detail Picasso, and thinking of him as your grandpa at the same time?

OWP: ‘I’ve learned to call up myself that Pablo Picasso belongs a little morsel to me and to the family, and expert lot to the rest of the world.

Pablo belongs to everybody.’