The Picasso Case: A Couple Convicted of Handling Stolen Art Works

After 10 years of proceedings, in November 2019 the Lyon Court of Appeals sentenced Pablo and Jacqueline Picasso's former electrician, and his wife, to a suspended two-year prison sentence and ordered them to hand over the 271 works to the estate administrator. The case came to light when the couple sought to authenticate the works, which were not listed in estate inventories and whose existence had never been disclosed. Most are unsigned. They include drawings, sketches, studies, portraits, caricatures of friends, paintings, lithographs, collages, a work on wood and two notebooks from between 1900 and 1932. Some of them, namely Cubist collages, are extremely rare and were pivotal in that movement's history. A Complaint and a Legal Investigation The defendants said that, out of friendship, Picasso and his wife had given them a bag containing all the works. Unconvinced, the court found them guilty of possession of stolen goods.…