Couple guilty of hiding Picasso art

A RETIRED electrician and his wife who hid 271 unpublished works by Pablo Picasso in their garage for nearly 40 years have been found guilty of possessing stolen goods.

The court in Grasse, on the French Riviera, handed Pierre and Danielle Le Guennec two-year suspended prison sentences.

Throughout the trial, Mr Le Guennec, 75, had insisted that Picasso's wife Jacqueline gave him a box containing the 271 works while he was working on their farmhouse in Mougins in 1971 or 1972. He said that she told him: “This is for you”.

He added that when he got home, he found what he described as "drawings, sketches, crumpled paper,” and told the court that he put the box in his garage, where it stayed until he rediscovered it in 2009.

The following year, he took the box and its contents to Paris for authentication at the Picasso Administration - which is when the artist’s heirs filed a complaint against him.

During the trial, all 271 works, created between 1900 and 1932, were shown on a giant screen. They included drawings of women and horses, nine rare Cubist collages from the time Picasso was working with fellow French artist Georges Braque and a work from his "blue period”.

None of them bear the artist’s signature. Several witnesses testified that the artist would sign everything he created – partly to ensure against theft.

According to Gerard Sassier, the son of Picasso’s long-time chambermaid, the artist once said after an attempt theft: "Anyway, nothing can be stolen as nothing is signed."

Prosecutors had called for the couple to receive a five-year suspended jail sentence.

The works - which have not been officially valued - have been seized by authorities and will be returned to the Picasso Administration.

A 1942 portrait of Picasso's lover Dora Maar sold for $22.6m in May last year.

Image: France TV Info / screengrab