'In Malaga I realised I was not half Spanish but half Andalusian'

Paloma Picasso Designer

The last of the Malaga artist's children who visited the city last week for the unveiling of the sculpture of her grandfather, talks to SUR

Paco Griñán

MALAGA

She appears at the interview in a long red outfit and a smile on her lips in the same infectious colour. She is accompanied by an entourage, but doesn't wait for anyone to introduce us. She is enough to break the ice - that's putting it mildly, because it's thirty degrees outside. Her staging exudes complicity and closeness, probably the opposite of what you'd expect from someone whose name is Picasso.

Paloma Picasso (Vallauris, France, 1949), jewellery designer and for the last couple of years the head of the company that looks after and manages her father's millionaire legacy, returned fleetingly to Malaga last week to accompany the sculptor Xavier Vilató, a relative of hers, at the inauguration of the monument to José Ruiz Blasco, Pablo's father, Paloma's grandfather and great-grandfather of the author of the work. She had time to receive SUR and confess that in this city she discovered that “she was not half Spanish, but half Andalusian”. And it seems so. It's not just to make herself look good. She speaks a French-accented Spanish which, I suppose, must be the opposite of the French with a “strong” Spanish accent that her father used to speak with. However, she confesses that our fellow countryman never spoke to her in his own language, but she is fluent in it, because she says it is in her “genes”.

-You never got to know José Ruiz?

-Well, this is the first time I've met my grandfather and it's a great thing. I am very happy to have come and to be here at this very special and emotional [the unveiling] moment.

-What do you know of him?

-I never had grandparents on my father's side. The ones that looked like grandparents to me were two portraits that my father and mother had in their bedroom, but they were actually the parents of the painter Henri Rousseau. To me, those were my grandparents. That was my life, fantasy versus reality. I grew up in a world where the things around me were as real as ideas and imagination.

-What did you think of the sculpture by your cousin Xavier Vilató?

-Well, that work is our family, but now it is also the family of all the people of Malaga and that's the way it should be. Besides, I had heard all my life that my grandfather painted doves, and they are also in the sculpture.

-Do you remember the first time you knew your father was from Malaga?

-The truth is that its such a long time ago that I don't remember. But it was top of mind when Christmas came around, because we would get raisins from Malaga and things like that, that he liked a lot.

• Paloma Picasso expresses her satisfaction at the unveiling of the sculpture dedicated to her grandfather, José Ruiz Blasco. (Marilú Báez)

  -We know everything about Picasso, is there anything left to discover?

  -Always. It is impressive. You see it in every exhibition. It was so rich what he did and you can read it in so many different ways that every time new doors open and new connections are made. He was always reinventing himself.

  - Last year there was an exhibition at the Casa Natal with works by Picasso about his mother, Francoise Gilot, but she didn't like to pose for him...

  -That's what is said. She was also an artist and lived to be 100. She used to say to me: 'Your father was the most intelligent person I ever met in my life'. But not just because he was wise, but because he was able to make connections between things that had nothing to do with each other, but he could find a connection, it was fascinating.

  -You speak Spanish very well. How did you learn it?

  -It took me years. Although I look Spanish, my father never spoke to me in Spanish. Well, from time to time he did, and especially when he was with someone who didn't speak a word of French. He spoke French with a very strong Spanish accent, but it's funny that at home you didn't notice it, but when he spoke on the phone, I thought: 'What an accent my father has! I learned Spanish little by little. And the more days I spend here, the better I speak it. It's in my genes.