Picasso as Seen by Otero

It is a stunning collection of candid and intimate photographs documenting the last years of Pablo Picasso's life. As a friend of the Picasso family, the Argentine photographer, journalist, writer and documentary filmmaker Roberto Otero (1931-2004) had a unique opportunity to continuously document Pablo Picasso and his circle of friends during the last years of Picasso's life, in the south of France. Over the course of nearly ten years, from 1961 to 1970, Otero made hundreds of portraits of Picasso, amassing a vast collection of photographs. A number of circumstances make Otero's photographic work exceptional. The first is without doubt the size and scope of the collection. The second is that it covers precisely the period when the number of photographs taken of Picasso dropped in comparison to previous decades, so Otero's pictures inevitably became the most important documentary record of the artist's old age. It is this very fact, however, along with his familiarity with, and access to, the artist's private circle, that make Otero's archive so unique and, ultimately, so natural.