Otero and the written memory of Picasso
The close relationship between Roberto Otero and Pablo Picasso generated, in addition to an extensive photographic archive, close to a large family album that constitutes an exceptional testimony to the daily life of the Andalusian artist, a large documentary archive made up of diverse materials ranging from the correspondence that Otero maintained with people close to the artist, notebooks with notes of their meetings, posters of his exhibitions, among other documents.
Pablo Picasso and Roberto Otero in the living room at Notre-Dame-de-Vie, Mougins, August 1966
‘There are only two books of conversations with Picasso, among hundreds of titles, and both are by two photographers, Brassaï and Otero, the only two friends who seem to have had the idea of systematically recording their talks with the painter’.
Memories of Picasso
The Roberto Otero Photografic Archive also holds notebooks handwritten by the photographer which contain fragments of conversations he had with Pablo Picasso (1961-1970).
Notebook with annotations by Roberto Otero. Notre-Dame-de-Vie (Mougins), [1966-1967].
Picasso and Alberti, a creative friendship
Otero was one of a small number of personal friends who accompanied him for a time with their cameras slung over their shoulders. The section on the rapport between the painter and the poet and writer of Cádiz, Rafael Alberti, is a good example. With Alberti, another Spaniard in exile for political reasons, Picasso shared long soirées and many encounters, as well as various contributions to poetry books illustrated by both.
Rafa Marí. “La última tertulia. Picasso y Alberti, una creativa amistad”. Las Provincias, 8th November 2002, p. 75, and Poster of the Café de Chinitas, Málaga, 16th December 1972
Handwritten copy by Roberto Otero of a fragment of the Picasso poem Trozo de piel written in La Californie (Cannes), 9 January 1959.
Lejos de España: encuentros y conversaciones con Picasso, with text and photographs by Roberto Otero. Barcelona: Dopesa, 1975