Picasso’s granddaughter selling $290 million art, concerns market

Nowadays, the art world is talking Picasso, but this time the focus of attention is not the great Spanish artist alone. Marina Picasso, his 64-year-old granddaughter, is willing to privately sell off some of her grandfather's works worth estimated over $290 million.

Marina, who inherited a vast number of paintings, thousands of drawings and her grandfather's lavish Cannes villa "La Californie," has created speculation in international art markets due to her unusual sales approach, reported a Guardian article. She has been engaging in charity works for the elderly and troubled teenagers and previously sold her collection pieces to finance her projects.

According to Page Six, there are at least seven works that Marina intends to sell, including a 1921 work titled "Maternite," a portrait of Picasso's Russian ballerina wife Olga Khoklova "Portrait de Femme," a 1911 work titled "Femme a la Mandoline" and a 1935 portrait "La Familie."

Although it is unknown whether her choice would depress prices in the art market, there is something that greatly triggered Marina to abandon her inheritance. Born in 1950, she is the daughter of Paulo, the eldest son of Picasso and Olga. "He was not a real grandfather, or a benevolent father," Marina previously told to Agence France-Presse (AFP). Her 2001 memoir "Picasso: My Grandfather," reveals a childhood in poverty and demonstrates the destructive effects of her grandfather's fame on her family. She still remembers being 6 years old waiting in front of her grandfather's house with her father and younger brother to collect the weekly allowance that Picasso involuntarily gave. In her memoir, Marina describes his father as a weak man who was entirely dependent on Picasso. "He was always a bit the toy of his father. He was never able to grow up," Marina told AFP. She received psychological therapy for years to recover from her gloomy childhood. The unpredictable mood of Picasso, one of the most influential modernist artists, might be a reason why he had so little interest in his grandchildren. His rapid fluctuation can even be observed in his works ranging from somber blue paintings to cheerful colors and his African-influenced period to cubism, a revolutionary art movement led by himself and Georges Braque.

Marina tried hard to overcome her brother's suicide and childhood full of burdens. Upon his father's death, she inherited a large amount of her grandfather's fortune. "It was really difficult to carry this celebrated name and to have a difficult financial life," she told in her New York Times interview.

The sumptuous French villa, where Picasso lived with her second wife Jacqueline Roque and now a museum open to the public, intimidated Marina at first. Certain resources reported she is also planning to put the villa on the market, but it has not yet been confirmed.

The following words from her memoir might help us to understand the feelings of a granddaughter who sought love from a phenomenal artist, "He [Picasso] drove everyone who got near him to despair and engulfed them. No one in my family ever managed to escape from the stranglehold of this genius." Under the worrying atmosphere of the international art market, where Picasso pieces are sold for millions of dollars every year, Marina seems to be determined to leave her past behind.