PICASSO’S PARIS STUDIO SLATED TO BECOME LUXURY HOTEL

Plans to transform a seventeenth-century building, where Picasso once had a studio, in Paris’s tony sixth arrondissement into a hotel are underway, Le Figaro reports. On February 7, the National Arts Education Committee (CNEA) filed an appeal to block a permit granted to a developer, the Helzear Group, by the Paris City Council in 2015. Although the attic where Picasso worked is classified as a historic monument and was painstakingly restored by CNEA to provide visitors a glimpse of the environment in which the artist worked (he painted his 1937 masterpiece Guernica there) and waited out the Nazi occupation, the building is still slated to be fully renovated and transformed into a hotel and residence.

CNEA has appealed directly to the French president through a letter signed by its ambassador, Charlotte Rampling, and president Marie-Christine Barrault. CNEA also has the support of Picasso’s daughter, Maya Picasso, who spent part of her childhood and adolescence in the studio.