Paris - (AFP) - The granddaughter of the famous painter Pablo Picasso, Diana Widmeier Picasso, considers the unprecedented exhibition dedicated to her mother Maya, the first daughter of the icon of modern art, which is hosted by the Picasso Museum in Paris until the end of December, as a "diving". Really intimacy.

The exhibition constitutes an unprecedented journey into Picasso's family world, as it includes in its first pavilion about ten colored paintings by Maya, small, among them "Maya with a doll" (1938), "Maya with a doll and a horse" (1938) and "Maya in a sailor's uniform" (1938). ) and "Maya in a Boat" (1938) and "Maya in the Apron" (1938).

The painter's granddaughter, the curator of the exhibition along with a specialist in Picasso's work, Emilia Filippo, points out that "it is the first time that the paintings completed between 1938 and 1939 and spread throughout the world are collected."

After seeing these paintings that open the exhibition, visitors watch a short film that introduces them to the heart of family life that Picasso was keen to protect.
Highlighted in the exhibition is Picasso's attachment to his first child, who was born on September 5, 1935. Her birth was kept secret, as it was the result of the painter's relationship with Marie-Therese Walter, who is 28 years his junior.
And the name Maya is actually the way little Maria used to pronounce her name, which Picasso chose for her after his sister, who died when he was fourteen.
Diana says Maria "has been her father's best friend and best friend all her life, and the only person with access to his private studio" at any time of the day or night.
Through exhibits about Picasso's vacations with his daughter in the south and their going swimming or attending bullfights, the exhibition shows how Maya became an outstanding assistant to her father at the age of twenty during the 1955 film "The Picasso Mystery" by Henri-Georges Clouzot, which won the Jury Prize at Cannes a year later.
Diana points out that a number of drawings, paintings, poems, sculptures, and pictures that bring the painter together with his daughter are testament to this "relationship" and show the strong bond that brought Picasso together with his "family (...) that is atypical for that era, not for the painter." She asserts that Picasso was a "modern man" and a "loving father".
Diana speaks of her grandmother's "coded presence" in many of the paintings because Picasso was "still married to Olga [Khokhlova] when he met her".
It also deals with the "changes" that Picasso faced "after meeting Dora Maar, which destabilized the family relationship."

Picasso was very caring for his four children: the eldest Paolo from his relationship with Olga Khokhlova, and Maya. and Claude and Paloma, born of his relationship with Françoise Guillot.
The exhibition includes a series of drawings prepared by the artist for Maya and with her, when she was four years old in Royan during the first year of World War II in 1939, including, for example, coloring books to which Picasso added characters, and still life drawings that Maya evaluated as "10 out of 20". silhouettes of small animals and a stage for cut-out paper puppets, as well as wooden puppets.
Letters, intimate items, clothes and deeply personal objects are in a final section of the exhibition, says Diana Widmeier Picasso, likening the exhibits to a "family archeology" that reveals a little-known side of Picasso: his superstitious influence and his relationship to death and the unseen world.
He even “kept clipped hair and nails to protect them from bad guys,” adds the young woman, who recently published a book on the subject entitled “Magic Picasso” (about Gallimard), co-written with her by anthropologist Philippe Charlier.