It was no coincidence that Diana Widmaier-Picasso chose Thanksgiving to launch her latest book, “Picasso and Maya: Father and Daughter.”
“That’s why I wanted to celebrate tonight,” said the vivacious art historian, who lived in the U.S. for a few years recently. “It’s a very meaningful holiday.”
Giambattista Valli, Coco Brandolini, Ellen von Unwerth and Betony Vernon were among the beau monde who packed into an upstairs gallery at Gagosian in Paris to inspect the new tome, which chronicles the relationship between the artist and his eldest daughter, Widmaier-Picasso’s mother.
“That’s why I wanted to celebrate tonight,” said the vivacious art historian, who lived in the U.S. for a few years recently. “It’s a very meaningful holiday.”
Giambattista Valli, Coco Brandolini, Ellen von Unwerth and Betony Vernon were among the beau monde who packed into an upstairs gallery at Gagosian in Paris to inspect the new tome, which chronicles the relationship between the artist and his eldest daughter, Widmaier-Picasso’s mother.
Setsuko Klossowska de Rola and Giambattista Valli
Courtesy Photo
In her musical voice, Widmaier-Picasso showed von Unwerth some of the overlooked details of an original 1938 oil painting of Maya at age three, clutching a doll and a toy horse. “And you have to understand the context of a world that was collapsing,” she explained. “A child represents hope.”
The grandchild of another great 20th-century artist, Joan Punyet Miró, unwrapped his copy of the hefty hardcover and Weidmaier-Picasso, dressed in a sleek Alexander McQueen dress accented with a gold spider pendant, gleefully signed it.
The late Joan Miró, considered part of the Surrealist movement in art and a great pal of Picasso’s, was not a figurative artist,