Picasso died with no will and about 43,000 works, and the French state took its tax in paintings

Picasso died at 91 at Mougins. He left no will. The auctioneer Maurice Rheims counted 1,885 paintings, more than 1,200 sculptures, about 7,000 drawings, 3,222 ceramics and about 30,000 prints. Le Monde put the estate at 1.2 billion francs in 1977. His only child born in marriage was Paulo, son of his first wife Olga. Maya was his daughter with Marie-Thérèse Walter. Claude and Paloma were his children with Françoise Gilot. Claude and Paloma had sued in 1970 to be recognised as his heirs, and a 1972 law on filiation, applied retroactively, let them win in 1974. His widow, Jacqueline Roque, kept Paulo's son Pablito away from the funeral. Pablito drank bleach and died in 1973. Paulo died in 1975. The heirs became Jacqueline, Claude, Paloma, Maya and Paulo's children Marina and Bernard. The heirs paid inheritance tax in art: the state took about a fifth of the estate in works through a dation in 1979, and these formed the Musée Picasso in Paris, opened in 1985. Marie-Thérèse Walter hanged herself in 1977. Jacqueline shot herself at Mougins in 1986. Marina inherited about a fifth, more than 10,000 works, and the villa La Californie. In 2026 Paloma runs the Picasso Administration, which licenses the name and image; she took over when Claude died in Geneva in 2023. Maya died in 2022.