Publication date: November 2024

Price: £500

Book Extent: 128pp

Sketchbook Extent: 104pp

Book Format: 340mm x 300 mm

Sketchbook format: 160mm x 145mm

Book Binding: Hardback Linen

Sketchbook Binding: Hardback Linen

Territory: World

ISBN: 978-1908337702

picasso: The lost sketchbook

written by Gavin parkinson

From January to April 2010, Pablo Picasso’s son Claude received a series of letters requesting certificates of authenticity for a group of works by Picasso that were then either unknown or presumed lost. A meeting was arranged on 9 September that year with the writer of the letters, Pierre Le Guennec, where close examination by Claude and his associates of a batch of 175 items showed them to be major works by Picasso.

Le Guennec was a retired electrician who had worked as a handyman for Picasso and was unlikely to have been gifted or purchased any of the artworks. Suspecting theft, Claude called in the police. The discovery of 271 items at Le Guennec’s home was followed by prosecution of Le Guennec and his wife in 2015 for possession of stolen goods.

Some of the artworks were put up for auction at Sotheby’s, including a pocket sketchbook full of exquisite pencil drawings. This book examines these in detail, with expert analysis by Gavin Parkinson, Professor of European Modernism at the Courtauld in London.

The book is packaged with a version of the sketchbook itself in a beautiful linen-bound clamshell.