Christine Ruiz-Picasso, who helped found a museum in Málaga, Spain, dedicated to the Cubist artist, died on April 6 at 97. She died at her home in Provence, France, according to Europa Press.
In a press release announcing her passing, the Museo Picasso Málaga described Ruiz-Picasso, who was Picasso’s daughter-in-law, as an “essential figure in the creation of this institution and a tireless advocate of the artistic legacy of Pablo Picasso.” The release continued, “Her artistic sensibility and commitment to culture made her a respected figure in the museum and culture spheres.”
She was born Christine Pauplin in 1928 in France. She met Paul Ruiz-Picasso at some point in the 1950s and together they had their only child, Bernard, in 1959. The couple wed in 1962. As the daughter-in-law of Pablo Picasso, one of the 20th century’s most influential artists, she took it upon herself to become one of the artist’s fiercest proponents, especially in the years after her husband’s death in 1975.
The most important example of this devotion was through the realization of a lifelong dream of Picasso’s: to establish a museum in Málaga, the coastal city in the country’s Andalusia region where the artist was born in 1881. According to the museum’s website, in 1953, Picasso had approached Juan Temboury Álvarez, then Málaga’s Provincial Delegate of Fine Arts, about establishing a museum in the city of his birth, but that plan never materialized.
It was Christine Ruiz-Picasso, whose husband was Picasso’s eldest son with his first wife Olga Khokhlova, who revived the idea of establishing a museum dedicated to the artist in Málaga. She had initially been involved in the mounting of two Picasso exhibitions at the Episcopal Palace of Málaga in 1992 and 1994.
By 1996, she had decided to formalize these plans, and the following year, she and her son Bernard donated 223 works by Picasso to a foundation that had been set up to manage the museum. That year, the Andalusian government also purchased the Buenavista Palace as the site for the planned museum.
The Museo Picasso Málaga opened in 2003, exactly 50 years after Picasso had first envisioned it. The inauguration was performed by Spain’s King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofía. Ruiz-Picasso was named the institution’s honorary president, and that year she also received the Grand Cross of Alfonso X the Wise and the title of “Hija Predilecta de Andalucía” (Beloved Daughter of Andalusia).
In a statement sent to ARTnews, Miguel López-Remiro Forcada, the artistic director of the Museo Picasso Málaga since 2024, said that when he first arrived at the museum he opened the catalog for its inaugural exhibition, where he found a question Ruiz-Picasso had seemingly posed to Picasso: “Will it live up to what you envisioned for your native city?”
“The question,” López-Remiro Forcada wrote, “Christine Ruiz-Picasso once posed regarding the museum—whether it truly lives up to what Picasso envisioned for his native city—remains a guiding reference and a demanding standard for this institution.”
In the two decades since its founding, the museum has mounted more than 80 exhibitions and welcomed over 10 million visitors. To celebrate the museum’s 20th anniversary, it renamed its auditorium in honor of Christine Ruiz-Picasso.
López-Remiro Forcada added, “Her authentic vision for this project sprang from what Christine Ruiz-Picasso once described as a ‘kind of mysterious will’—a form of providence that transformed her deep desire and impulse into a living museum that is nourished by admiration and gratitude toward Picasso, the trace of a family lineage, and the enthusiasm and fervor of the people of Málaga.”
