PICASSO VISTO POR OTERO

Over a period of ten years (mostly from 1961 to�1970), Roberto Otero, who was a photographer, journalist, writer and documentary filmmaker, took hundreds of pictures of Picasso, producing a massive collection of photographs that was acquired by Museo Picasso M�laga in 2005. The archive comprises over 1,500 pictures - including negatives, slides, copies on paper and internegatives - and it constitutes a major documentary testimonial focussing on the last years of the artist's life, when he moved to live at Notre-Dame-de-Vie, in Mougins in the South of France. 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. It provides the basis for the constant, close nature and obsessive repetition of this collection of photographs.� The Fondo Fotogr�fico Roberto Otero were acquired by Museo Picasso M�laga in December 2005. They contain 1,915 colour and black-and-white photographs, of which 992 are negatives and slides, 198 internegatives, and 795 prints on paper. The picture archive is complemented by other documents belonging to Otero, comprising personal correspondence, notebooks, and papers related to the photographer's exhibitions.�