MALAGA.- Roberto Otero (Trenque Lauquen, Buenos Aires, 1931-Palma de Mallorca, 2004) was one of the main photographers who continuously took intimate images of Pablo Picasso in the last years of his life, which took place in the south of France. His relationship with the maestro, whom he met through art critic Ricardo Baeza and writer José Bergamín, was strengthened by the family tie which united him with Rafael Alberti. This close contact made possible the large photographic archive, close to a great family album and that constitutes an exceptional testimony of the artist’ s daily life.

The photographs selected for Moments and Views: Picasso Seen by Otero show Pablo Picasso with family, friends and people he knew such as poet Rafael Alberti, photographer Edward Steichen, collector Joseph H. Hirshhorn, sculptor Carl Nesjar and painter Edouard Pignon, among others. These are photographs which were not premeditated, they are spontaneous in which the author shows aspects of the artist’s surroundings which would have been difficult to get by a normal photographer. The exhibit, which can be seen through August 20, was curated by Sofía Díez and Carmina David-Jones.

The images are integrated documents in the relationship between two persons who spent days, sometimes weeks, talking until late at night, eating and drinking in the artist’s house. They went to the bullfights together and visited nearby towns. In these photographs the spectator can see Picasso working or involved in passionate discussions on art and life. At other times, he simply appears in his calm intimacy, at one of those points where nothing in particular happens.

Otero shows an inclination to photograph the works of art made by Picasso, at most times with irregular framing, as if they were characters that lived in the artist’s studio. At other times, Picasso observes and manipulates them, as when he examines the details of the model for the monumental sculpture Head of a Woman from 1967 installed in the city of Chicago or when he prepares the great exhibit which the Louvre dediacted to him on his 90th anniversary, when he became the first living artist to receive this distinction.

In the same manner, Jacqueline Roque, the artist’s couple during the last twenty years of his life, is the protagonist of many of the instants captured by Roberto Otero’s camera. The muse imposes her quiet presence in the images, always aware of what is happening around her. Probably, Otero’s most important picture of Jacqueline is the one where she is silhouetted with a back light and shows her seated, with legs crossed and smoking a cigarette.

Roberto Otero’s curious objective was to introduce the spectator into the life of the man who was the most celebrated artist of his time, in a sensation of the daily experience of a person, of his relations, of jokes and discussions between friends.