Aix-en-Provence — A retired electrician who kept nearly 300 Pablo Picasso artworks in his garage for almost 40 years told an appeal court on Monday that the artist’s widow wanted to keep the works hidden from his son Claude. "Mrs Jacqueline Picasso had problems with Claude Picasso," Pierre Le Guennec, convicted last year of possessing stolen goods, told the court in a trembling voice. A few months after Picasso died in April 1973, "she asked me to store garbage bags at my home", the 77-year-old defendant told the court in Aix-en-Provence, saying there were between 15 and 17 bags. Some time afterwards, Le Guennec said that Jacqueline Picasso retrieved the bags but gave him one of them. The collection, whose value has not been assessed, includes 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". The unsigned works, which had not been inventoried, were created between...
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