Picasso original: basement find turns out to be the artist’s work

Surprising basement find
Family-owned painting turns out to be a real Picasso

62 years ago, a junk dealer discovered a Picasso in a basement on Capri – without having any idea what he had there. Experts now estimate the painting to be worth millions.

Decades ago, Luigi Lo Rosso found an interesting painting while clearing out a cellar on the Italian island of Capri. It shows the distorted image of a woman. Lo Rosso took the rolled-up picture with him to Pompeii, where it has since hung in a cheap frame on the wall of his living room. It never occurred to him that it could be a valuable original by a great artist.

Experts suspect that it is a painting by Pablo Picasso and that it depicts Dora Maar: the French photographer and painter was considered Picasso’s lover and muse. But Lo Rosso had no idea who she was. The family couldn’t even agree on whether the picture should hang there at all, son Andrea says today. His mother regularly described the painting as “terrible.”

Only the son becomes suspicious

In the top left corner of the Picasso’s signature can be seen in the painting, but the Lo Rossos suspect nothing. “My parents were simple people, they knew nothing about art,” son Andrea told the newspaper.Il Giorno“. As a child, he discovered in an encyclopedia that the painting had similarities to Picasso’s “Buste de femme Dora Maar”. For his parents, this was proof that it must be a copy. As he got older, Andrea did research However, Lo Rosso continues to pursue.

Finally, the family presents the painting to experts. “I worked on it for months and compared it with some of his original works,” graphologist Cinzia Altieri now reports to “Guardian“. “There is no doubt that the signature is his.” Altieri is a member of the scientific committee of the Arcadia Foundation, which restores and evaluates works of art. Estimated value: six million euros.

Did Picasso portray Dora Maar twice?

The similarity between the Lo Rossos painting and the work “Buste de femme Dora Maar” is also an important indication for experts: Luca Marcante, President of the Arcadia Foundation, suspects that both paintings could be originals. “They are probably two not entirely identical portraits of the same subject that Picasso made at two different times,” he tells “Il Giorno“. Picasso himself was a frequent guest on the Italian island of Capri. According to expert estimates, the painting was created between 1930 and 1936.

Marcante now wants to present the results of the investigations to the Picasso Foundation. If this also confirms the authenticity of the painting, it should further increase the value. “I’m excited to see what they’ll say about it,” says Andrea Lo Rosso. His father will no longer have any of this knowledge: he died three years ago.

Pablo Picasso lived to the age of 91 and created more than 14,000 works before his death in 1973. Even today, the works of art with his unmistakable signature are sold for millions of euros.

Sources: Il Giorno, The Guardian