A surreal find: Unknown Picassos surface

Associated Press

PARIS

A retired French electrician and his wife have come forward with 271 undocumented, never-before-seen works by Pablo Picasso estimated to be worth at least $79 million, an administrator of the artist’s estate said Monday.

The electrician, who once worked for Picasso, and his wife for years squirreled away the staggering trove — which is believed to be authentic — inside a trunk in the garage of their home on the French Riviera.

The cache, dating from the artist’s most creative period from 1900 to 1932, includes lithographs, portraits, watercolors and sketches — plus nine Cubist collages said to be worth 40 million euros alone, according to French daily Liberation, which first reported on the discovery Monday.

Pierre Le Guennec, a 71-year-old former electrician, and his wife showed many of the works to Picasso’s son Claude and other estate administrators in Paris in September, seeking to have the works authenticated, Picasso Administration lawyer Jean-Jacques Neuer said.

Shortly after that meeting, Neuer filed suit on behalf of Picasso’s heirs for alleged illegal receipt of the works. Police investigators are looking into how Le Guennec and his wife, Danielle, came by the pictures.

“This was a gift,” Danielle Le Guennec told The Associated Press by phone from their home in the town of Mouans-Sartoux, near the tourist Riviera hot spot of Antibes. “We aren’t thieves. We didn’t do anything wrong.”

She said the couple decided to come forward with the works this year because they were getting on in years and “didn’t want to leave any headaches to our children” with their own estate. Her husband had undergone a cancer-treatment operation in March, she said.

Claude Picasso, quoted in Liberation, noted that his father was known for his generosity — but that he always dedicated, dated and signed his gifts. “To give away such a large quantity, that’s unheard of. It doesn’t hold water,” Claude Picasso was quoted as saying.