Ms. Ruiz-Picasso, who was christened María de la Concepción, was born on Sept. 5, 1935, in Paris. She was named after Picasso’s sister, who had died in childhood, a loss that haunted him. In time “María” became “Maya” as a result of how the young child pronounced her own name.
According to the 2021 book “A Life of Picasso: The Minotaur Years, 1933-1943,” the final installment of John Richardson’s four-part biography of the artist, Picasso registered the birth as “father unknown” because French law at the time did not allow a married man to be listed as the father of another woman’s child. Instead, at her baptism in 1942, he identified himself as her godfather.
She grew up mostly in France, with her father dropping into her life periodically.
“I loved watching my father paint because he approached the canvas as if he were dancing on tiptoes,” Ms. Ruiz-Picasso said in an audio guide to a 2013 Picasso exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. “First, he painted. Then, to see the work, he had to back away. Then he looked at the painting from a distance to see what it needed. Then he danced off again.”
She attended the Lycée Français, an international school in Madrid. She met Pierre Widmaier, a naval officer, in 1960 in Greece, and they soon married.
After Picasso’s death in 1973, Ms. Ruiz-Picasso sued successfully to be recognized as an heir, as two children Picasso had with another lover, Françoise Gilot, had done earlier. That gave her the right to use the name Ruiz-Picasso, Ruiz having been the name of Picasso’s paternal grandfather, though she also often used the name Widmaier.
An agreement among the heirs also gave her part of his estate, though only after complicated negotiations, since Picasso had left no will.
