Muguet de Paris

With all due respect to his Spanish origins, it is hard for me to think of Pablo Picasso as anything other than a French painter. Admittedly, I feel the same way about Modigliani, an Italian, or Chagall, a Russian Jew, or the Japanese Fujita. In my mind, if you were painting your way across Paris from Montmartre to Montparnasse, and part of that mad, mad world, you are a French painter.

All of that, just to say that 35 years ago today, the 8th of April 1973, Picasso died at his villa in Mougins at the age of 91, while he and his wife were entertaining friends for dinner.

Along with a body of work that changed for all time the way we look at art, he left us with his final words: 

Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can’t drink anymore.

To learn more, go to the official Picasso site, available in French and in English, or to the site of the Picasso Museum in Paris.

Photo of Pablo Picasso, Revista Vea y Lea (Argentina)

Jan del Monte, blogging from the rue du Cherche-Midi, Paris, France

© 2008 Jan del Monte

∞

~ by Jane del Monte on April 8, 2008.

Posted in People, Performing Arts, Potpourri