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As a child, there was a portrait in our family home in Paris that I always loved. Today, it’s known as Maya with Doll – but to me it was just a portrait of my mother, albeit a remarkable one. “Your grandfather was a painter,” she would say, whenever the subject of the canvas, one of many that hung around the house, came up in discussion. It was only when I began school, and whispers about my heritage started to follow me, that I realised what an understatement that was. My grandfather was far more than a painter. He was the defining figure of 20th-century art – and, as I would learn later from years of academic study, a true genius. It was a revelation that would shape the course of my life in many ways. When Picasso died – in 1973, the year before I was born – he left behind 45,000 works, not to mention personal objects and correspondence.
