A handyman stole hundreds of Picassos from two heiresses—now the Paris gallery that purchased them is on trial

In a scenario of far more than 550 stolen Picasso drawings and prints, the prosecutor has requested for suspended prison sentences from the homeowners of the Parisian gallery Belle et Belle.

The gallerist Anne Pfeffer and her partner Herbert, stand accused of concealing hundreds of will work stolen from the daughters of Jacqueline Picasso and the art dealer Aimé Maeght. In accordance to the two ladies, Catherine Hutin-Blay and Sylvie Baltazart-Eon, at minimum 553 drawings and initial prints by Picasso, value extra than €13.5m, had been stolen in between 2006 and 2008 from their neighbouring houses in Paris by a handyman who utilized their keys in their absence.

The theft was only identified in 2011 when four drawings ended up offered to Picasso’s estate for authentication prior to an exhibition at a different Parisian gallery. The thief, Freddy Muchenbach, was detained for four months and produced mainly because of the statute of limitation. He admitted to acquiring stolen hundreds of performs on paper from Hutin-Blay and Baltazart-Eon, to cover his gambling’s money owed.

According to Muchenbach, he sold them to a middleman nicknamed Toni for an alleged total of €150,000. Arrested in Italy, Antonio Celano (Toni), confessed that he sold the loot, for the exact price as well as a 10% commission, to Anne Pfeffer, the 80 yr-outdated owner of Belle et Belle. But, in courtroom, Celano denied recognizing the origins of the haul and claimed he did not know that the drawings could have been sketches produced by Picasso.

In the course of the demo, from 5-7 October, Pfeffer and her husband denied any wrongdoing but refused to response any queries. The investigation had demonstrated a dysfunctional management of their gallery: income of unsigned drawings by Picasso, failure to continue to keep documents of transactions, illicit payments in cash, and the use of an offshore enterprise tied to an anonymous bank account in Switzerland. “It was not ideal,” acknowledged François Artuphel, one particular of the couple’s defence attorneys, “but there was no way for them to realize that the functions they bought experienced been stolen”. Celano claimed that “this is how it functions”, referring to the mechanisms of the art market at the time. The gallery was hardly ever billed for fiscal fraud.

Fifty-6 performs were being recovered from the couple’s gallery and residences, their cellars and the cellar of their daughter, Géraldine Pfeffer-Lévy, and from gurus and collectors who experienced all attained them from Belle et Belle. Some sheets were being weakened or experienced been lower into parts when they bore several drawings.

Jacqueline Laffont, an additional defence attorney, experimented with to minimise the worth of the theft, boasting it was challenging to have faith in the two heiresses, who from time to time experienced to correct the range of lacking parts. Baltazart-Eon testified to the troubles of establishing inventories of hundreds of sheets, primarily when the major suspects did almost everything to conceal their handling of the stolen qualities. The main investigator, Thomas Ehrardy, mentioned that the Pfeffer family demonstrated “unique treachery” all through the seven-12 months investigation. Herbert Pfeffer, who is a medical doctor, to begin with claimed he had acquired some of Picasso’s drawings from a affected individual, urging him to make a assertion in exchange of prescriptions of Valium. Herbert confessed to the court docket that he “was not proud of this lie”.

The authorized sign-up of transactions vanished from the gallery, when the premises have been sealed, but the Pfeffers denied acquiring anything at all to do with the theft. According to rates versus them, in some cases, the quantity inscribed on engravings by Miro, Giacometti, Kandinsky, Calder and the like had been changed. As the initially figures of the confined editions had been destined by Aimé Maeght for his small children, a 4/50 would develop into 14/50, to steer clear of any trail to the dealer’s daughter. “There is almost nothing typical in their conduct: the perpetrators are gangrene for the artwork current market,” stated Anne-Sophie Nardon, a attorney for the two heiresses, who also asks “wherever are the 500 works or so still missing?” A judgement on the case is predicted on 18 November.