Picasso’s daughter exchanges famous artworks for a tax bill settlement
The French Government has negotiated a unique deal with Pablo Picasso’s daughter, Maya Ruiz-Picasso, to settle an inheritance tax bill.
France is set to receive six paintings, two sculptures and a sketchbook by the world-famous artist, as French finance minister Bruno Le Maire announced during a press conference at the PIcasso Museum.
“It is an honour for our country to welcome these new artworks by Picasso. They will enrich and deepen our cultural heritage,” Le Maire wrote on Twitter.
Le Maire presented one of the artworks at the press conference: the 1938 painting called Child with a Lollipop Sitting Under a Chair.
According to Picasso’s grandson Olivier Widmaier-Picasso, the painting depicts his mother Maya as a child.
French citizens have been permitted to settle debts similar to Maya’s with a payment of profitable art, books, and collectibles of national importance since 1968.
The collective total of the nine objects given by Picasso's daughter was not publicly disclosed.
According to France’s culture minister Roselyne Bachelot, the artworks will enter the national collections at Paris’s Musée Picasso in 2022, and will be exhibited as a whole to the public in the spring of 2022.
“It is with deep emotion that I come to celebrate the entry into the national collections of the works,” said Bachelot, who called the donation an “exceptional event.”
Image credit: French Ministry of Culture