Picasso Lives

Picasso by Picasso

A retired electrician in France, Pierre LeGuennec, has just revealed that he and his wife own 271 original Picassos, which nobody else in the artworld knew existed.  A bit of perspective:  271 sounds like a large number, but Picasso produced over 70,000 works of art in his life.  Paintings, statues,  weird stuff.  That’s about 3 works of art a day for 70 years. Also, a lot of the works aren’t physically large works.  Apparently a lot of them are just sketches on random pieces of paper.  Still, art experts say that there are 3 pieces in the collection which between them are worth 40 million euros, and it’s safe to assume that each of the other 268 pieces will be worth something at auction.

Anyway, Picasso’s heirs are screaming theft.  They say that Pablo wasn’t in the habit of giving his work away lightly.  LeGuennec, who worked on many of Picasso’s houses over the years, said Picasso’s 2nd wife gave them the works.  Not much way to know, really, since both Picasso and his 2nd wife have been dead now for many years.

I see many possible scenarios, some more and some less flattering to LeGuennec.  He was such a whiz as an electrician that Picasso gave him the works out of gratitude. Picasso’s wife liked LeGuennec so much (hey, women have affairs with electricians- that could happen) that she gave him the works, or she was pissed off at Picasso and wanted to chuck some of his stuff, perhaps she just told LeGuennec to clean out the garage and he took her a little too literally or perhaps LeGuennec, knowing that Picasso had so much shit stored he wouldn’t miss a piece here and there, pilfered the pieces over many years.  Any of these could make a movie, but that last one is my favorite.  It makes me think that the reason he revealed the 271 pieces now, and he can even compromise and just offer to donate them to a museum, is because now nobody will even question the extra 20 or 30 pieces he has, and he’ll get a great price on them in a secret transaction.  Millions of euros.  The perfect crime.

In any case, unless the Picasso family filed a report with the police that these works were stolen, 40 or 50 years ago, they can forget about it.  They belong to LeGuennec now.