Picasso’s heirs win the legal battle against Le Guennec
The Tribunal correctionnel of Grasse in the morning of Friday, March 20, 2015, pronounced a final judgment after three days of trial (10-12 February 2015), ordering to Pierre and Danielle Le Guennec two-year suspended sentence, ending a long history that began in 2010. The works seized were entrusted to Claude Ruiz-Picasso to which the couple Le Guennec appealed to get the certificates of authenticity, lying for forty years in his garage of Mouans-Sartoux.
The story
Pierre Le Guennec, technician attending upon Picasso for ten years, and his wife Danielle, would claimed the possession of a box containing 271 unpublished sketches made in the first three decades of the xxth century and then stored in their home of south-east of France. However, the works triggered a thorny issue raised by judicial Picasso Administration, which turn to the law to recover the precious works including some rare Cubist collages, a Blue Period’ watercolour and some carnets. The heirs recognized the works authenticity and charged Le Guennec with theft and concealing of goods, who instead claims to have received them as a gift from Jacqueline Picasso in the early 70s, while working at the country property of Notre-Dame-de-Vie.
The unclear points:
There are still grey areas that remain on this matter. The excellent state of preservation, hardly compatible with the forty years of storage in a garage; the family ties between Le Guennec and Maurice Bresnu, owner of an important collection of Picassos, and former artist’ driver who died in 1991; the accurate work of classification that may suggest the intervention of experts, and the lack of the artist’ signatures, as he used to sign and dedicate all his works just before to make them over. According to several contradictions, the works disappearance occurred between the death of Picasso in 1973, and the various posthumous inventories of his works. Some assumptions calls into question some mysterious Swiss collectors and galleries, and even the shadow of a huge illegal trade of Picasso’ works seems possible.
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