1000 Museums

When he died in 1973, Picasso left behind a considerable number of pieces, which fell naturally to his wife and children. A law called dation, which allowed an artist’s heirs to pay their estate taxes by turning over artworks to the State, also allowed for the founding of a museum dedicated solely to Picasso. It was from this standpoint that the artist’s heirs agreed to let the State choose which pieces it would take before carrying out their distribution and the dissolution of the collection. Thus from among all the pieces (often intimate or carrying the mark of his work) with which Picasso never parted were selected to constitute the museum’s collection: 203 paintings, 158 sculptures, 29 relief paintings, 88 ceramics, 1,500 drawings, and 1,600 etchings, as well as manuscripts and works of pasted paper.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Yann Caradec https://flic.kr/p/pRHqbw CC BY-ND 2.0