[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Christine-RP-1.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tChristine Ruiz-Picasso, who helped found a museum in M\u00e1laga, Spain, dedicated to the Cubist artist, died on April 6 at 97. She died at her home in Provence, France, according to Europa Press. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tIn a press release announcing her passing, the Museo Picasso M\u00e1laga described Ruiz-Picasso, who was Picasso\u2019s daughter-in-law, as an \u201cessential figure in the creation of this institution and a tireless advocate of the artistic legacy of Pablo Picasso.\u201d The release continued, \u201cHer artistic sensibility and commitment to culture made her a respected figure in the museum and culture spheres.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tShe 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\u2019s most influential artists, she took it upon herself to become one of the artist\u2019s fiercest proponents, especially in the years after her husband\u2019s death in 1975.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe most important example of this devotion was through the realization of a lifelong dream of Picasso\u2019s: to establish a museum in M\u00e1laga, the coastal city in the country\u2019s Andalusia region where the artist was born in 1881. According to the museum\u2019s website, in 1953, Picasso had approached Juan Temboury \u00c1lvarez, then M\u00e1laga\u2019s Provincial Delegate of Fine Arts, about establishing a museum in the city of his birth, but that plan never materialized.<\/p>\n
\n\tIt was Christine Ruiz-Picasso, whose husband was Picasso\u2019s eldest son with his first wife Olga Khokhlova, who revived the idea of establishing a museum dedicated to the artist in M\u00e1laga. She had initially been involved in the mounting of two Picasso exhibitions at the Episcopal Palace of M\u00e1laga in 1992 and 1994.<\/p>\n
\n\tBy 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.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe Museo Picasso M\u00e1laga opened in 2003, exactly 50 years after Picasso had first envisioned it. The inauguration was performed by Spain\u2019s King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sof\u00eda. Ruiz-Picasso was named the institution\u2019s honorary president, and that year she also received the Grand Cross of Alfonso X the Wise and the title of \u201cHija Predilecta de Andaluc\u00eda\u201d (Beloved Daughter of Andalusia).<\/p>\n
\n\tIn a statement sent to ARTnews<\/em>, Miguel L\u00f3pez-Remiro Forcada, the artistic director of the Museo Picasso M\u00e1laga 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: \u201cWill it live up to what you envisioned for your native city?\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe question,\u201d L\u00f3pez-Remiro Forcada wrote, \u201cChristine Ruiz-Picasso once posed regarding the museum\u2014whether it truly lives up to what Picasso envisioned for his native city\u2014remains a guiding reference and a demanding standard for this institution.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn the two decades since its founding, the museum has mounted more than 80 exhibitions and welcomed over 10 million visitors. To celebrate the museum\u2019s 20th anniversary, it renamed its auditorium in honor of Christine Ruiz-Picasso.<\/p>\n \n\tL\u00f3pez-Remiro Forcada added, \u201cHer authentic vision for this project sprang from what Christine Ruiz-Picasso once described as a \u2018kind of mysterious will\u2019\u2014a 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 M\u00e1laga.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/christine-ruiz-picasso-dead-museo-picasso-malaga-founder-1234780414\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Christine-RP-1.jpg?w=1024″] Christine Ruiz-Picasso, who helped found a museum in M\u00e1laga, Spain, dedicated to the Cubist artist, died on April 6 at 97. She died at her home in Provence, France, according to Europa Press. \u00a0 In a press release announcing her passing, the Museo Picasso M\u00e1laga described Ruiz-Picasso, who was Picasso\u2019s daughter-in-law, as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1870241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1870241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1870241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1870241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1870241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1870241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1870241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}