Lorraine Williamson
A deeply personal new exhibition at Barcelona’s Picasso Museum invites visitors into the rarely seen family life of Pablo Picasso. Titled Crecer entre dos artistas. Homenaje a Claude Picasso (Growing Up Between Two Artists. Tribute to Claude Picasso), the show runs until 26 October and offers an intimate tribute to Claude Picasso, son of the legendary artist and Françoise Gilot.
Curated by his sister Paloma Picasso, the exhibition is both a memorial and a celebration of a unique childhood steeped in art, creativity, and contradiction.
Life in Vallauris: A family under the spotlight
The exhibition focuses on the years Picasso spent with Françoise Gilot. She was his muse, partner, and the mother of his two youngest children, Claude and Paloma. They lived together in the Provençal village of Vallauris, in southern France. Gilot later documented this chapter in her frank and bestselling memoir Living with Picasso. In it, she describes a man who was both brilliantly inventive and emotionally controlling. Gilot was famously the only woman to leave him.
Against this backdrop, the exhibition brings to life the joy and complexity of their family dynamic.
Rediscovering Françoise Gilot
For the first time in Spain, Françoise Gilot’s artistic legacy takes centre stage. Her paintings and watercolours — still in demand internationally — reveal a visionary talent long overshadowed by her relationship with Picasso. In 2024, she ranked 304th among the world’s most collected artists, yet her name remains unfamiliar to many.
The exhibition repositions Gilot not just as Picasso’s muse, but as a formidable artist in her own right.
Childhood on a canvas
This isn’t a traditional gallery of masterpieces — it’s a window into a home shaped by artistic expression. Visitors will find ceramics, sketches, paintings, toys, letters, and photographs that show how the boundaries between play and art were constantly blurred.
Picasso transformed everyday items into artworks. A pram once belonging to Claude was repurposed into the sculpture La Mona y su Cría (The Monkey and Her Baby), while Paloma’s childhood espadrilles were painted and preserved like relics.
Through these pieces, the exhibition reveals not just Picasso the artist, but Picasso the father — spontaneous, imaginative, and often intrusive.
Fractured families and forgotten wills
Picasso’s personal life was famously tangled. When Claude and Paloma were born, he was still legally married to ballerina Olga Khokhlova and simultaneously involved with photographer Dora Maar. The lack of formal recognition meant the children had to go to court to gain the legal right to use the name Ruiz Picasso. Their half-sister Maya also fought a similar legal battle.
The artist’s death in 1973, without a will, added further complexity. Claude took charge of managing the estate and the Picasso copyright empire. Since his death in 2023, this task has passed to Paloma.
Today, she oversees the legacy, distributing royalties among Picasso’s descendants, including his seven grandchildren.
The scent of memory
In one of the exhibition’s most poignant moments, Paloma recalls her father not with images but with scent: black tobacco, jasmine, and orange blossom. It is, she says, the smell that defines her earliest memory — being rocked in his arms as he climbed the stairs of their Vallauris home.
Such sensory fragments add emotional texture to an exhibition that’s as much about memory as it is about legacy.
Glimpse into the studio
Also featured is the short film Atelier 74, co-directed by Claude Picasso. It offers a rare look inside La Californie, Picasso’s studio in Cannes, preserved almost exactly as it was. This glimpse behind the curtain adds another dimension to the familial perspective of the show — a reminder of the chaotic magic of Picasso’s creative world.
A rare opportunity to step inside the Picasso household
Running until 26 October, this moving exhibition offers a rare opportunity to see Picasso not as the myth or master, but as a partner, father, and deeply complex human being. Through the eyes of Claude, Paloma, and Françoise Gilot, Growing Up Between Two Artists becomes less a portrait of Picasso — and more a portrait of those who lived in his shadow.
For anyone drawn to art, family legacies, or the human stories behind genius, it’s not to be missed.