Unseen Picasso paintings found in garage

A huge cache of canvas painted by Pablo Picasso nearly 100 years ago were unveiled for the first time by a French man who claimed the art works were gifted to him by the legend. The collection of 271 paintings, drawings, sketches and lithographs, many of which were previously unknown, dates from 1900 to 1932. The extraordinary works of Picasso, worth more than 50 million pounds, were found at the home of a retired French electrician, The Guardian reported.


The revelation came on Sept 9, when Pierre Le Guennec, in his 70s, approached the office of the Picasso Administration, which manages the artist's legacy, seeking certificate of authenticity of the artifacts. In the office of Claude Picasso, 63, the late painter's son, who represents the artist's heirs and estate, he produced 175 different works that, he claimed, were by Picasso. The art works include nine cubist collages worth at least 40 million euros, a painting from his celebrated blue period, drawings and models for some of his most important works and portraits of his first wife, the Russian ballerina Olga Khokhlova.

Experts said many of the paintings had a numbering system known only to the painter. Various works are from the period between 1900 and 1932, when the young and penniless Picasso arrived in France from Barcelona to the beginning of his recognition as one of the world's greatest artists. Le Guennec also produced two notebooks containing 97 previously unseen drawings, along with 59 photographs of other pieces. The electrician said Picasso and his wife Jacqueline had given him the pieces after he installed alarm systems at the painter's various homes, including the La Californie in Cannes, the Chateau de Vauvenargues and the mill at Notre Dame de Vie in Mougins, where Picasso died in 1973.

In October, police raided Le Guennec's home and confiscated a total of 271 items. Le Guennec was taken into custody but was released without being charged with any crime. Claude Picasso told the French newspaper Liberation that the discovery came after Le Guennec sent him letters in January, March and April this year enclosing dozens of photographs of various Picasso works he said he owned, and asking for certificates of authenticity. Dismissing them as fakes because they did not appear in any catalogue or inventory of the artist's known work, Claude Picasso refused Le Guennec's requests.

"Many of these pieces weren't dated, which shows they should never have left his studio," he said. Claude Picasso said the collection has a "historic importance" as it was produced during a "crucial period; a revolutionary movement in art". - Hindustan Times

Katharsis in a forbidden zone - An exhibition at Gallery Sumukha, Bangalore

The works in the exhibition at Gallery Sumukha, Bangalore, India represent, epitomise and evoke various alchemical substances to suggest a precise examination of their properties, the laboratory paraphernalia alluding to different stages of purification and transformation, while a host of more or less ordinary objects link the findings of the quasi-science and modern scholarship with the character of our reality, human imperfections or impurities as well as hope and ideals. The large canvases deal with the basic classical metals of alchemy in a manner that binds them with and lets them disclose rudimentary qualities of the human disposition. The artist begins from a position of neutral objectivity and in the centre of the paintings places a researcher’s table whose frontal position in vanishing point perspective seems to display it clearly to the viewer. The table covered by white cloth introduces the sense of an old-fashioned study but with a tinge of domestic interior. The vessels for chemical experiments and a profusion of other objects demonstrate their nature and connections at various planes. 

With the help of the titles one can grasp some of the content, whereas, indeed, like in the obscure science of alchemy, the specific, often complex relationships between motifs necessitate detailed elucidation. On longer scrutiny, the objects arranged so as to indicate their condition begin to stir responding to one another. As one recalls the words denoting energy, flow and spirit that recur in Dimple’s drawings, the items on the table top which usually include devices that heat substances contained in glass retorts appear to enact self-presentation and transformation, like performers explaining themselves to the attentive audience. The sense of a nearly theatrical scene is enhanced by the large format of the paintings that invite an immediate, static focus from the spectator.

The installation is a shower cubicle broad enough to accommodate a single person, modern and rudimentary of character but reverberating of scared bath rituals. The steel shower head, pipes and basin may be ordinary, their glimmering smoothness yet exuding a minimalist aesthetic finesse. The four external walls studded with hundreds and hundreds of tiny glass bottles with hair and nail shavings, with ash and salt conjure an impact that is raw, fragile and perishable as well as enchantingly ephemeral when the translucent sheets fill with immaterial radiance against light. The substances in the phials represent the physical frame, the medical allusiveness of the samples in their containers suggesting illness but also a possibility of cure. The empty space surrounded by curtains inscribed with the enigmas of alchemy, between the shower and the basin strewn with grain salt is intended to hold and cleanse the invisible spirit, the body and the soul never to be considered alien. The sensitivity and the senses of the person entering the cubicle become engaged on multiple levels, the sight heightened and completed by the smell and the sound of water along with alchemical process hymns.

Silent View

“Silent View” illustrates just a single bullet on the table in a surrealistic landscape to display the power of the metal iron in our society. Iron is now synonymous with wars, weapons and violence, for disputes arising out of land and territories.

Tin Cry

It is a video installation piece where I attempt to preserve my body and soul from decomposition but in the process I realize that it is a completely impossible task since the tin/aluminum foil which is used to preserve food and other items cannot preserve life, and so it cannot preserve my body and soul from corrosion. It is a conditional preservation, the whole act becoming a Paradoxical Act. The video is supported by audio, talking about the experience during my performance.

Great Expectation

Great Expectation speaks about silver. In history and present times, silver has always been connected to dreamy worlds and poetry. The lunar influence on metal also adds to the quality and character of the metals for example the black and white images of photography where silver is used to bring out the images, and it has also been linked to film industries’ “Silver Screen’. The word lunatic, which has lunar influences, is also linked with the moon.

Acrylic on canvas, 7 ft x 7 ft, 2010