As a child, Pablo Picasso's granddaughter Marina often found herself shut out of his sumptuous Cannes villa “La Californie”. Four decades after his death, the gates of the house she inherited, along with thousands of his art works, are always promptly opened to visitors, AFP reported.

“Living in this house, unconsciously perhaps it's a way of recapturing lost time in a place where we were once excluded,” says Marina, who for many years struggled to accept “an inheritance given without love”.

To mark the 40th anniversary of Picasso's death this year, Marina has opened up her private collection to help stage an exhibition exploring the recurrence of nudes in the great Spanish artist's work.

“Picasso, Nudity Set Free” features 120 works. Around 90 come from Marina's collection, some of which have never before been on public display.

But Marina, who was in her early twenties when her famous grandfather died, is matter-of-fact about the loan. “This comes from my inheritance, I don't make anything special of it,” she tells AFP with an air of detachment.

Marina and her elder brother Pablito's childhood was punctuated by rare and unhappy visits to see their grandfather, who spent most of his life in France.

These often featured “long waits behind the gate” while “the master” woke up, she says. Picasso's second wife “Jacqueline used to order that we wait; she rejected anything that disturbed him”, Marina recalls.

Born in 1950, Marina is the daughter of Paulo Picasso, son of Picasso, and his first wife, Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova. As an adult, Marina underwent years of therapy and poured her painful childhood memories into her 2001 memoir “Picasso: My Grandfather”.