Picasso electrician guilty of stealing 270 works

A court in the French Riviera town of Grasse found Pierre and Danielle Le Guennec guilty of possessing stolen goods.

The works have been seized by authorities and will be returned to the Picasso Administration, which represents his heirs.

"We're disappointed," mumbled Pierre Le Guennec, now 75 and retired.

"We're honest people. Perhaps, we don't know how to speak ..." he added, before his wife blurted out: "We're the little people. We don't have a grand name."

Le Guennec had insisted throughout the trial that the artist and his wife gave him the treasure trove when he was working on the last property they lived in before Picasso died in 1973.

"Picasso had total confidence in me. Maybe it was my discretion," he told the court.

"Monsieur and Madame called me 'little cousin'."

He said that one day, Picasso's wife, Jacqueline, came up to him and gave him a box with the 271 works inside, saying "this is for you".

When he got home, he found what he described as "drawings, sketches, crumpled paper".

Uninterested in the haul, he put the box in his garage and discovered it again decades later in 2009.

He went to Paris the following year to get the works authenticated at the Picasso Administration, but the artist's children promptly filed a complaint against him.

One of the artist's children, Maya Widmaier-Picasso, said: "It's a downright cheek to try and make us swallow that story."

"These works should never have been removed from the estate and from the history of art," said her half-brother, Claude Ruiz-Picasso.

There has been no value placed on the collection but some reports say it could be worth up to €120m.

Prosecutors had called for the couple to receive a five-year suspended jail sentence.

The couple's lawyer said she would appeal the verdict.

Credit: skynews