This entry is posted on number 12 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until March 18, 2025.
“The name I carry is the most beautiful gift they have given me: it sounds good in all languages and represents the dove of peace,” he tells me Paloma Picassodaughter of Pablo Picasso and the artist Françoise Gilot, from his home in Marrakech, where he spends most of the year with his husband, the osteopath Eric Thévennet. “Here winter is wonderful, in Switzerland it is cold and humid,” he adds with joy.
There jewelry designerentrepreneur and administrator of Picasso Administration, will not stop smiling, nor joke, throughout the chat. The first time he showed – at least in public – that The symbol of peace fitd them by brush It was May 5, 1978, the day of his wedding with Rafael Lopez-Campil in Paris, when he managed to make a truce to the two “tribes” rivals of Karl Lagerfeld andThe Yves Saint Laurent. Amane of both of them, he commissioned them his outfit in a Solomonic way: Yves took care of the day dress with Bolero, skirt and blouse with a bow and ruffle, while Karl fascinated it in a red party dress with a snort sleeves, to symbolize a gigantic heart. At the ceremony in the Magione of Lagerfeld, the two would sit next to them and would have chatted animatedly. At the next party, they would even dance. That wedding was widely documented by the press of the time, by books such as Karl by Marie Ottavi as well as by an episode of the miniseries BEcoming Karl Lagerfeld. Paloma in the series is played by Jeanne Damas, an IT Girl who tries to emulate the charisma of one of the most iconic characters of the 70s. “I didn’t see it and I don’t intend to do it. I lived reality. You can’t tell a life in six hours, “he comments.
Have they ever asked you for advice?
«Yes, for the series Genius: Picasso. But I refused. To begin with, they don’t know the truth, they must imagine it ».
Why do you and her friends arouse so much interest?
«In the 60s we thought everything was possible. Before the AIDS he reigned a very optimistic vision. Fashion has started to become … fashion (laughs). Until then the stars were those of cinema. But then the time for the models came. I went to the fashion shows because the stylists were my friends, but there was no one: the sector printing, the buyers. You didn’t go there to be seen ».
Do you feel nostalgia?
“No. It was fantastic, but it seemed normal to me. It is true that I dressed in the fashion shows. When he went to the nightclub (he was a attendant of study 54 with Warhol: “He turned a lot of drugs, but neither he nor did he take it: we had fun the same”, he said, editor’s note) I indulge myself. Let’s say I was my first creation ».
As a young man he adopted a look that wasn’t even fashionable. «In the films I saw, women brought a very intense red lipstick. For years I didn’t take the sun because I liked more with light skin. When I launched My perfume (Paloma Picasso1984) the packaging was red. Twenty years ago I stopped taking it. I was too recognizable. Once, on the street, a lady said: “It is Paloma Picasso”. Another replied: “He can’t be, he doesn’t bring lipstick” ». The day of this conversation has a clean face, without a thread of rougeand wears a lively pistachio green caftan that contrasts with the trees of the garden. It is in a good mood. It is not easy, he warns, to make them lose the brackets. «Maybe from the photos I give this impression. The eyes, the red lips … it was because they were a little afraid of me. So they didn’t realize that I was much more afraid of them. “
She could live very well of income. “I do not know. My mother raised us without waiting for my father’s possible legacy. From an early age, I heard: “He will paint as his, as his mother”. It’s a nice burden (laughs). In the end I realized that it was what I wanted to do, without stopping being my greatest criticism. Precisely because people think that everything is very easy for me, I make myself very difficult. “
When did he understand who his parents were?
“It was impossible not to understand it. In the 1950s, Picasso became a character. Walking with him on the street was like being with Mick Jagger. And, at the same time, he was my father. I saw him painting and understood because people were fascinated by it. He had a huge charisma. Animals also warned him ».
He appeared for the first time in the newspapers For his merits when he designed his first jewel: a velvet necklace and fake diamonds for Barbara (French singer and actress, editor’s note). At the time, he worked in Paris as assistant to the scenographer Luc Simon. Paloma inherited his vocation from his mother. «There are several photos of me girls I wear jewels. My mother was very beautiful. I tried them, hoping that he would say to me: “When you are great, they will be yours” “, remember. The fourth daughter of the painter, whom Picasso portrayed in Paloma à l’Orange And Paloma en Bleu“Admired the father (who was admired by everyone)”, but “felt a special admiration” for the mother, a “complicity”. Françoise Gilot died in 2023 at the age of 101. «We will create a Foundation for his work to be represented as he deserves. Moma bought a couple of paintings, “he says. “When the movement for the liberation of the woman in the United States began, I was 13 years old and I wondered:” What problems do those ladies have? “. When I made 16 of them, I realized that what they wanted was the life I had: a modern mother, who lived in her own art ». Gilot, daughter Boémienne of an entrepreneur, met Picasso in 1943 in a Parisian coffee, at the age of 21. The painter was 61. Twelve years and two children later, he left him. She was the only woman who had the courage to do it, as she would have told in great detail in her autobiography, My life with Picasso. His publication in 1964 (which the protagonist tried unnecessarily to prevent) truncated every relationship between the artist and his children Claude and Paloma, who until then passed the summers in the south of France with him. “I remember with emotion the hours we spent together: he with the brush and I with pastels in his hand”. It was surrounded by the “friends of dad” (the artists Henri Matisse and Jean Cocteau, the poet Jacques Prévert) who “for us were like uncles”.
Paloma took the reins of Picasso Administration A month before the death of his brother Claude, during the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of that of his father. The genius was the subject of an exhibition, It’s Pablo-Maticwho “intended to demonstrate that my father had been a terrible macho. I didn’t like it, “he said. «Picasso is not only the most important artist, but also the most reproduced. I spend a lot of time talking to the lawyers, thinking about what my father would have accepted. The licenses were already granted when it was alive. And museums cannot live without merchandising, “he explains. Despite being a very busy woman, she has no intention of abandoning the collaboration with Tiffany & Co., which began in 1980 and resulted in iconic pieces with the olive branch, the heart or dove as a reason. “It would not be nice to forget this part of me to devote myself only to my father,” he says. Not to mention her qualities as a mediator in a descent where the relationships were not without contrasts: the painter, who at his death left 45 thousand works and billions of euros, did not make a will. «Now we collaborate much more. I, the last of his children, and mine and my grandchildren. See you at least once a month, “he says. «If someone wants to reproduce a work, only I can authorize it. There are things that go well, others that I cannot accept », protest. “Picasso is not a commercial activity, he is a person, a painter.”
Karl Lagerfeld called her “the most talented person who knows”. Is there anything that has not succeeded?
“At the entrance there are two Chinese porcelain that I bought 30 years ago. I would have liked to expose them to two shelves, but I did not succeed (laughs). I hope to find the right project ».
Photo Ron Galella.
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Source: Vanity Fair
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