Maya Ruiz-Picasso

On a unique father-daughter creative dialogue

Pablo Picasso’s eldest daughter, María de la Concepción, nicknamed Maya, was born on September 5, 1935. The artist was wholly entranced with his child, promptly taking Maya as a muse. This volume, which accompanies the exhibition at the Picasso Museum in Paris, explores the artist’s relationship with his daughter, as refracted through his extensive documentation of her early years. Daughter of Pablo not only reproduces Picasso’s numerous drawings, paintings and photographs of Maya but also presents collaborative drawings by the father and daughter.
Essays by Emilia Philippot, Diana Widmaier-Picasso and Rafael Inglada, among others, discuss Maya’s childhood―a period marked by incessant war in Europe and traumatic upheaval in Picasso’s personal life. A conversation between Maya and her daughter, Diana Widmaier-Picasso, in which Maya revisits her memories of her father, is also included.