Claude Ruiz Picasso is a French photographer, cinematographer, movie director, visual artist, graphic designer, and businessman. He is a child of Françoise Gilot and Pablo Picasso and the older brother of Paloma Picasso; by wish on Gilot's part, he was named after Claude Gillot, a pioneering French Rococo artist and mentor to fellow artist Jean-Antoine Watteau. His name was Claude Gilot until age 12. In 1968 he met Sara Lavner, a young woman from Brooklyn. Sara and Claude married in 1969 and divorced in 1972. He was a photographer in New York City when his father died. At the time, he had experienced a period of estrangement from his father due to his mother's memoir Life with Picasso. His father's legacy nevertheless proved important to him and he established the "Picasso Administration" to look after copyright and other legal matters.
Claude lived in New York between 1967 and 1974. He was Richard Avedon's photographic assistant for almost a year, and studied cinema and mise-en-scène at the Actors Studio. He also worked as a photojournalist for Time Life, Vogue and Saturday Review.