Suspended sentence in 40-year Picasso theft

A French court found Pierre and Danielle Le Guennec guilty of possessing stolen goods after 271 Picasso works were found in their garage.

Suspended sentence in French Picasso theft

File image of Pierre Le Guennec and his wife Danielle arrive at Grasse criminal court, southeastern France, to face charges of receiving stolen goods from Pablo Picasso.

A French couple has been handed a two-year suspended sentence after they hid 271 Picasso works in their garage for nearly 40 years.

A court in the Riviera town of Grasse found Pierre and Danielle Le Guennec guilty on Friday of possessing stolen goods, after a trial that made headlines in France and abroad.

The works have been seized by authorities and will be returned to the Picasso Administration, which represents the artist's heirs.

There has been no value placed on the collection.

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

Pierre Le Guennec, a 75-year-old retired electrician, insisted throughout the trial the art legend and his wife gave him the treasure trove when he was working on the last property they lived in before Picasso died in 1973.

"Picasso had total confidence in me. Maybe it was my discretion," Le Guennec told the court.

"Monsieur and Madame called me 'little cousin'."

He said one day, Picasso's wife Jacqueline came up to him and gave him a box with the 271 works inside, saying "this is for you".

When he got home, he found what he described as "drawings, sketches, crumpled paper".

Uninterested in the haul, he put the box in his garage and discovered it again decades later in 2009.

He went to Paris the following year to get the works authenticated at the Picasso Administration but the artist's heirs promptly filed a complaint against him.

The court saw drawings of women and horses, nine very rare Cubist collages from the time Picasso was working with fellow French artist Georges Braque and a work from his "blue period" when he mainly employed shades of blue and blue-green.

A lot of the evidence during the trial centred around why none of the works were signed.


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Source: AAP



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