Category Archives: Pablo Picasso

UK art dealer jailed in US for defrauding clients of up to $30m

Posted on by

Timothy Sammons used works by Picasso and Chagall as collateral for personal loans

A prominent British art dealer who defrauded his clients out of millions by using a scheme that involved masterpieces by artists including Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall has been sentenced for up to 12 years in prison.

Timothy Sammons – a former Sotheby’s specialist who had offices in New York and London and who brokered multimillion-pound deals for the likes of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – used art that did not belong to him as collateral to obtain personal loans between 2010 and 2015.

Continue reading...

Fantastique beasts: cult art from the Lalannes’ private collection to go on sale

Posted on by
Surreal works from the home of François-Xavier Lalanne and his wife Claude expected to fetch up to £20m

For years, a giant brass and Sèvres porcelain grasshopper that could, if needed, double as a wine-cooler sat outside the royal apartments at Windsor Castle; a gift from French president Georges Pompidou to the Duke of Edinburgh during a state visit to France in 1972.

Across the Channel, an hour from Paris, the home of its late creator François-Xavier Lalanne and his artist wife Claude is full of such wonderful and whimsical creatures: a huge rhinoceros that transforms into a desk; a bronze cabbage on chicken legs; a herd of sheep that can be sat on, tables of enormous ginkgo leaves.

Continue reading...

Art detective Arthur Brand: how I found a stolen Picasso

Posted on by

The man dubbed ‘Indiana Jones of the art world’ says the paintings can ‘become a burden’

The ring at the door of the modest east Amsterdam apartment came late in the day on Thursday 14 March. On the doorstep stood two men “with contacts in the underworld”, Arthur Brand recalls, and with them a large, rectangular package.

Eagerly, Brand removed the covering and examined the contents: Buste de femme (Dora Maar), a portrait by Pablo Picasso of his mistress. Unsigned because it was never sold by the painter, it bore in its bottom-left corner the date he completed it, 26 April 1938, and was worth an estimated €25m (£21.5m).

Continue reading...