Picasso’s electrician on trial for ‘stealing’ 271 artworks he says were a gift

A former electrician and his wife who kept 271 works of art by Picasso in their garage for close to 40 years went on trial in France on Tuesday accused of possessing stolen goods. Pierre le Guennec, now in his 70s and retired, says the world-famous artist and his wife Jacqueline gave him the oil canvases, drawings and Cubist collages when he was doing work on the last property they lived in before Picasso died in 1973. But some of the artist’s heirs, including his son Claude, suspect otherwise and filed a complaint against the couple, who were charged in 2011.

If someone gives you 271 Picasso works, you remember that.

Jean-Jacques Neuer, Claude Picasso’s lawyer

The former electrician says that when he was working on Picasso’s home in Mougins, the artist often invited him to have some cake and drink coffee. He claims Picasso’s wife Jacqueline handed him a packet of sketches one evening. “When I came home, I saw sketches, pencil drawings. I didn’t know anything about all this.” He put the present in his garage, but when he went to Paris in 2010 to get the works authenticated at the Picasso Administration, the artist’s heirs filed an official complaint. The couple’s lawyer Charles-Etienne Gudin, meanwhile, said there were only a dozen works of value and that the rest was “very mediocre,” insisting that Picasso never tried to sell them.

Arts Picasso