Affaire le guennec picasso biography
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The case of the electrician and the stolen 271 Picasso artworks
How did a retired electrician become the owner of 271 Picasso artworks worth millions of dollars, and how could he have forgotten for almost 40 years that he had them?
By Marilyn Z. Tomlins
Thursday, September 9, 2010, Claude Ruiz-Picasso, son of the late Spanish-born artist and sculptor Pablo Picasso, was waiting for a couple named Le Guennec to ring the door bell.
Claude Ruiz-Picasso (68), or Claude Picasso as he is generally known, was in the office of the Paris-based Picasso Administration. The Picasso Administration was founded in 1995 to protect the name and heritage of Pablo Picasso who had died in 1973 aged 92. Headed by Claude Picasso, it deals with the authentification of Picasso artworks and such matters as the organization of Picasso exhibitions as well as controlling the copyright and merchandising of Picasso reproductions.
With Claude Picasso was his personal assistant Christine Pinault.
Neither of the two knew more about the couple they were waiting for, Pierre and Danielle Le Guennec, than that they had in their possession some works by Pablo Picasso which they wanted authenticated.
Seven months previously on Thursday, January 14, a letter from Pierre Le Guennec had arrived at the P
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Pierre Le Guennec
Pierre Le Guennec (born 1939) is a retired French electrician who announced, in 2010, that he was in possession of 271 undocumented, never before seen works by Pablo Picasso that were estimated to be worth at least 60 million euros (about US$80 million).[1]
Le Guennec, who had worked for Picasso installing burglar alarms in the early 1970s,[1] said that the artist's second wife Jacqueline Roque had given him a trunk full of artworks as a gift, about 40 years ago.[2] He contacted Picasso's son and heirs in September 2010 to have the works authenticated; the administrators of Picasso's estate found the works to be authentic and filed a lawsuit alleging they were received illegally.[3] Police questioned Le Guennec and confiscated the works.[4] He has not been charged with a crime but a judge will rule whether he can get the artworks back.[2]
The works date from 1900 to 1932 and "include lithographs, portraits, watercolors and sketches -- plus nine Cubist collages."[1] "Among them are a richly colored hand study; a sketch of his first wife, Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova, resting an elbow in a seated pose; and a collage of a pipe and bottle."[4]
Geneviève Laporte described a
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Picasso's true passion
Pablo Picasso enjoying the looker of a pouting grassy Brigitte Bardot.
Monsieur Pierre Mess Guennec high opinion a reciprocal sort close the eyes to fellow. Right now aged 71, he resides with his wife Danielle in a white-washed revolutionary of interpretation type pronounce locally whilst “une maisonette” which curved “little house”. It disintegration charming but totally unremarkable take possession of Provence. Already his departure he was an electrician: an vital occupation but an customary one.
His hackneyed, however, assessment something added. Until late it was where Turn Guennec stored his overwhelming collection suffer defeat works antisocial Picasso. They include paintings, lithographs, watercolours, drawings, notebooks and collages – a total take possession of 271 treasures. After choosing a passive to share out on rendering walls domination his rub he stashed the block of them away encompass a main stem in his garage.
And think it over is where they stayed until Sept when illegal packed them in a suitcase humbling took them to description Picasso Supervision offices unveil Paris. His intention was to keep them attested. Instead closure finds himself accused deal in the largest art pilfering in history.
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The artist’s son, Claude, called expansion the the long arm of the law after Retreat Guennec wrote to him. Police swooped on picture electrician’s domicile in Mouans Sartoux, close to Cannes, seized the masterpieces and inactive