Ah, ze turbulent world of art!  Where pieces of art go missing, and where they suddenly show up, sometimes in a large quantity.

For those not following the link and unaware, a Picasso “treasure trove” has come to light.  It seems that an electrician named Pierre Le Guennec and his wife had not one, not two, but two-hundred-seventy-one pieces of the master’s artwork stored in their garage for a few decades.  Picasso’s heirs are screaming theft, but I am not quite buying it.  Mr. Le Guennec’s story rings true enough:  The art was given to him by “Picasso and his wife” (emphasis mine) out of gratitude for installing alarms in their home.   Personally, I am thinking (and this is the reason for my emphasis) that Mrs. Picasso said something like, “Here, my husband is an artist, and our home is cluttered with things he’ll never sell.  Take these, please!”

Seriously, Pierre just does not look or (in my opinion) act like a thief.  He went to the Picasso family to get the artwork authenticated.  Now, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if you’re a thief you don’t go to the kids of the person you stole from to make sure that what you took was the real deal.  There are plenty of art enthusiasts out there who could have verified what Mr. Le Guennec had was legit and then paid him a great deal of money for it without raising any suspicions.  With a collection of two-hundred-seventy-one separate pieces, Mr. Le Guennec could have done this every few years and slowly put the pieces into circulation while keeping himself and his wife quite financially secure.

But he didn’t.  In fact, Mr. Le Guennec has suffered from cancer.  He could have sold just one of the pieces he had to help cover his medical bills, but he didn’t do that, either.  No, he kept them until he and his wife decided their days were numbered and it was time to “put their affairs in order.”   So he went to Picasso’s family for authentication.  He wasn’t asking for money, he just wanted to be sure that what he had was really the master’s work.

Looking at a bit of what’s on the above-linked page, it looks like some of it is just sketches.  Not full-fledged, complete works of art–although the art world will likely treat them as such–but rough sketches that never really got done.  The kind of thing a wife might foist on, say, an electrician who did some work for her and her husband.

Picasso’s friends and family say Pierre is lying because they don’t know him.  They never met him, etc.  Well, how often does one introduce one’s electrician to their family and friends?  Mr. Le Guennec hasn’t claimed to be Picasso’s friend.  The artist was known to be generous, so to me there’s no reason to believe he didn’t give a little bit of what he and his wife viewed as “clutter” to somebody like Pierre.

Ah, well.  The courts will sort it out sooner or later.  I am siding with Pierre.  I don’t think he wants boatloads of money.  In fact, I don’t think he was looking for any, and would have been happily surprised if any was offered.  He wanted, as near as I can tell, to authenticate the work so he could pass it on to his kids and they could know if it was real or not and deal with it accordingly.

Perhaps one day people will squabble over some stashed away copies of one of my stories.  I haven’t given any away yet, but one day, who knows?  See you tomorrow.