Picasso, Friends and Family

“He doesn’t bother me,” Picasso commented of the photographer
Edward Quinn, after the latter had first photographed
him at work in the ceramics studio in the early
1950s. This was undoubtedly one of the reasons why Quinn
was allowed to accompany the artist with his Leica for over
20 years from 1951 onwards during his time on the Côte
d’Azur: in the studio, in private with his family, with artist
friends, at the bullfight, out and about, with lovers or simply
at the hairdresser’s. The Quinn Archive holds a large
stock of photographs of great intimacy, showing Picasso
in everyday life and documenting his idiosyncratic character,
his humor, and his enthusiasm in an amiable and
light-hearted way.
Edward Quinn did not use a tripod with his camera, nor did
he illuminate the room artificially; his main concern was
to capture genuine pictures. As a viewer, you find yourself
on eye level with the protagonists. Almost like in the street
photography we know today, there is a captivating sense
of the casual moment. This book is a magical selection of
photographs from Picasso’s everyday life and shows the
famous artist in many unexpected situations.

From 1949, EDWARD QUINN (1920, Dublin–1997, Altendorf/Switzerland) lived and worked on the Côte d’Azur as a press photographer for international magazines such as Life and Paris Match. During his 20-year friendship with Picasso, he took more than 12,000 photographs of the artist. From the 1960s onwards, Quinn concentrated his work entirely on the art scene, portraying the likes of Max Ernst, Alexander Calder, Francis Bacon, Salvador Dalí, Graham Sutherland, David Hockney and Georg Baselitz.