



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.