A painting discovered by an antique dealer in the basement of an Italian villa six decades ago is actually a work by Pablo Picasso and could sell for millions, experts say.
Luigi Lo Rosso used to spend his days “scouring” abandoned houses and junkyards in search of treasures to sell at his family’s pawn shop in Pompeii, Italy.
In 1962, he found a rolled-up canvas with an asymmetrical painting of a woman in the basement of his villa on the nearby island of Capri. The painting is now believed to be a distorted image of French photographer and poet Dora Maar, who was Picasso’s lover, according to Luca Gentile Canal Marcante, an art expert and president emeritus of the Arcadia Foundation, a nonprofit restoration organization based in in Switzerland. of art.
Oil painting on canvas presents the asymmetrical Picasso style of a woman in a blue dress and red lipstick.
At just 24, Lo Rosso didn’t like the fact that the signature in the top left corner of the artwork, which simply said “Picasso,” meant anything, his son Andrea Lo Rosso told CNN on Tuesday. The elder Lo Rosso, who died in 2021, put it in a cheap picture frame and gave it to his wife — much to her dismay, his son said. He didn’t think it was pretty enough to sell, so it hung in the family home for about 50 years and later in a restaurant he owned. “When my mother hung it on the wall to decorate the house, renaming it ‘the stain’ because of the strangeness of the woman’s face depicted, I wasn’t even born yet,” said Andrea Lo Rosso.
“I know from Dad’s stories that two canvases were recovered from the Capri landfill. However, only one was signed by Picasso. They were both covered in dirt and lime and my mother spread them out and washed them with detergent, as if they were carpets.”.
How the journey of searching for authenticity began
In the 1980s, when Andrea Lo Rosso was in primary school, she saw Picasso’s “Buste de femme Dora Maar” in an art history book and learned that the Spanish painter spent time in Capri in the 1950s.
He then told his parents that the painting might have value.
Thus began a journey of decades to authenticate the signature on the artwork.
The family said they contacted art historians, many of whom told them it was not authentic but offered to take it off their hands. Suspicious, they registered it with the Italian heritage police, who initially thought it might have been stolen, but as it had not been authenticated at the time, they allowed the family to keep it.
The work of art has been locked in a safe in Milan since 2019. Finally, last month, Cinzia Altieri, a graphologist at an inheritance court in Milan, managed to certify Picasso’s signature as authentic. Altieri worked for months on the painting, comparing it to other works by Picasso and carrying out forensic tests to ensure it was signed around the same time it was painted. “There is no doubt that the signature is his,” she said in a statement to local Italian media on Monday. “There was no evidence of its hidden character.”
Art expert Marcante, who worked with the Lo Russo family, told CNN he is confident the painting is authentic.
Value in millions of euros
The Lo Rossos painting should be worth around 6 million euros, Altieri and Marcante estimate, based on the current art market.
If it is certified by the Picasso Foundation in Paris, it will be even more valuable. “I’m happy, but let’s wait to toast, there is one more step to take before we consider this incredible story closed,” said Andrea Lo Rosso. “I continue working like every day in the hope that even in Paris they will be convinced of the authenticity of the painting.”
Source: CNN
