Investigators in the French city of Champigny-sur-Marne made an unexpected discovery during a drug trafficking investigation last week: a painting by Pablo Picasso that police say had been stolen from a Paris storage site on an undisclosed date.
The artwork, the name of which has not been revealed, was stumbled on by police during a search conducted in the Île-de-France region. According to the Créteil prosecutor’s office, criminal investigators raided a home in the Paris suburb on June 15, expecting to find a cache of drugs. Police allegedly found “cannabis resin, luxury clothing and several thousand euros in cash,” reports AFP, as well as an artwork that on Saturday was authenticated as a painting by Picasso that depicts Marie-Thérèse Walter, the Spanish artist’s partner from 1927 to 1935.
According to Le Parisien, the painting belongs to a woman from Singapore, and is believed to have been stolen by an employee of an art storage facility in Paris who claims he committed the crime to highlight the company’s security flaws. The artwork, estimated to be worth between 12 and 15 million euros, depicts his muse in his well-known Cubist style. Comparable works, such as Le Rêve (1932) and Woman in Beret and Checkered Dress (1937), have sold at auction at comparable price.
