Picasso, ce volcan jamais éteint

Putting aside the members of his family, like his daughter Maya for example, he was one of the last persons to have been very close to Picasso. Born in 1923, Roland Dumas, the Minister of Foreign Affairs under President François Mitterrand, the president of the Constitutional Council, involved in various cases, such as the one linked to Elf, was the lawyer of the most famous artist of the 20th century before that. The relationship was built between 1965 (when the painter consulted him on the possible measures to be taken against Vivre avec Picasso, the book by Françoise Gilot), up to his demise in 1973. It was to Roland Dumas that Picasso entrusted the fate of Guernica, and authorized him to decide when the democratic conditions would exist for the painting to be sent to Spain. This book of conversations mentions this theme, as well as many others: the encounter between the two men thanks to Kahnweiler, the difficult relations Picasso had with his children born out of marriage (Claude and Paloma), his inheritance, etc. Dumas, just the same, confesses one thing: when Jacqueline Roque decides, after the death of Picasso, to burn his last works – female sexes – Dumas was the one who offered to strike the match.

• Picasso, ce volcan jamais éteint, conversations between Roland Dumas and Thierry Savatier, Bartillat, 2018, 220 p., €20.