Femme a la fenetre (Marie-Therese) at Sotheby’s evening sale of contemporary art on Nov. 13

"Femme a la fenetre (Marie-Therese)" (April 13, 1936) by Pablo Picasso. The painting is estimated at $15 million to $20 million.


Picasso’s portrait of his lover and muse Marie-Therese Walter is expected to sell for $15 million to $20 million. Painted in 1936, “Femme a la fenetre (Marie-Therese)” will be part of Sotheby’s Impressionist and modern evening sale on Nov. 5.

Picasso held on to the painting until his death in 1973. It was in the collection of Marina Picasso, the artist’s granddaughter, and shown in “Picasso and Portraiture, Representation and Transformation,” a 1996 MoMA exhibition curated by William Rubin.

75th anniversary of Guernica

2012 marks the 75th anniversary of one of the most infamous moments of the Spanish Civil War and the European inter-war period. On 26 April 1937, at the request of military dictator Francisco Franco, Hitler’s Luftwaffe bombed the Basque city of Guernica. While certainly a tragedy, the attack was not the most deadly of the civil war, though it is most remembered thanks to Pablo Picasso’s iconic painting.

Picasso, living at the time in Paris, read about the attack in the newspaper and was subsequently inspired to create what has become one of his great masterpieces. The canvas reaches 20x30 feet making the viewing experience almost immersive and all the more powerful. Painted almost entirely in black and white, the painting refers to Picasso’s second-hand experience of the event by alluding to newspaper images. As a Spanish native who spent his early life living all throughout the country, news of the bombing of Guernica was especially horrific.

Franco chose the small city of Guernica (or as the Basques spell it: Gernika) because though not the largest in the region, it was the official seat of the Basque government and very symbolic in Basque identity. The Basque region straddling the border of Spain and France has long expressed separtist leanings with many hoping for autonomy, and this would not be acceptable in Franco’s desire to build a new Spain. Though born in the south of Spain, Picasso spent four years in A Coruna, a town in Galicia in western Spain, and his teenage years in Barcelona, the major cultural and political centre of Catalonia. Galicia, Catalonia, and the Basque region each harbor unique identies within Spain and Gallego, Catalan, and Euskera respectively are official languages in addition to Spanish. It is likely that the experiences of his youth led to an even greater sympathy for the Basque people. The painting was initially displayed at the 1937 Paris International Exposition in the Spanish pavilion attracting great attention to the artist and the tragic event. With Europe on the brink of the Second World War, the fear expressed in the painting was soon to become reality for many.

Today Guernica resides in the Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid’s modern and contemporary art museum, though it spent a considerable amount of time at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Picasso and others felt the painting would not be safe while Franco was in power, so until the dictator passed away in 1975, the painting was held across the Atlantic Ocean to protect it from being destroyed eventually returning to spain in 1981.

Cash-strapped man who bought Picasso print for $14 at thrift store sells it for $7000

A man who bought an original Picasso print for $14 in a thrift store has sold it for $7,000 - 500 times the ticket price.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — An unemployed Ohio man was browsing at his local thrift store for items he could restore and resell when he spotted a Picasso poster with the word “Exposition” written across the front, some French words, and the image of a warped round face. He handed over $14.14 for what he saw as a nice commercial print.

Some Internet searches later — and a closer look at markings on the lower right area — and he sold what’s believed to be a signed Picasso print for $7,000 to a private buyer who wants to remain anonymous.
“A pretty darn good return,” said Zachary Bodish of Columbus with a chuckle. “Can’t get that at the bank.”
The 46-year-old Bodish, who was an event and volunteer coordinator at a museum for six years, originally turned to the Internet and a personal blog to write about his neat find from early March. Bodish had been supplementing his income with buying and reselling restored furniture, and he suddenly realized he may have hit jackpot.

“I could tell it was not a modern print,” he said. “So I thought, ‘Well, it’s probably not really a fine Picasso print. What’s the chance of finding that in a thrift store in Columbus, Ohio?”

His online search led him to the print’s history as an exhibition advertisement. And he began to look closely at some very faded red writing on the lower right area, which he originally thought were random pencil marks from the thrift store.

“It wasn’t until I realized where the signature would be, and that those little red marks were right where the signature should be, that I got a stronger magnifying glass out and determined that, ‘Holy cow! It’s really a Picasso.’”

Bodish said he consulted with art experts and met with a representative from Christie’s auction house to authenticate the piece. A Christie’s representative confirmed that Bodish met with a specialist, but the auction house said its policy is not to comment on items that aren’t sold through them. In this case, Bodish decided to sell the print privately in April.

Lisa Florman, an associate history professor at Ohio State University, has written several essays and a book on Picasso. She said the print is a linocut, meaning it’s a design carved out and pressed with ink onto paper. She examined the print only through photos, but she said it’s very unlikely the piece is forged because the piece would sell for so low in the grand scheme of major art fraud. She said she’s examined many forged Picasso signatures in the past, but felt confident about Bodish’s print.

Florman said Picasso designed the print to advertise a 1958 Easter exhibition of his ceramic work in Vallauris, France. She said the artist did these prints for several years, and it’s hard to tell how many are around today. There were 100 prints made for the ceramics exhibition, and Picasso signed them all.
But Florman said Bodish’s print, which is marked as No. 6, is valuable for being in the artist’s proof range. That means it’s possibly one of only a handful he personally reviewed before they were mass produced.
“Any of the 100 are considered original prints,” she said. “There’s certainly some collectors who really place a premium on a single-digit number because it indicates the artist’s greater involvement with the actual printing, so those particular prints can fetch a higher price.”