The Legend
The beauty of legends is that they are easy to believe in but just as easy to forget. But not the Picasso legend! The story began in the 1930s when people started talking about Picasso hiding paintings on the French Riviera. Friends, admirers, and rivals all wanted to know where the paintings were hidden and why he wouldn’t show them to the public.
Over the years, the story became more mysterious, with everyone guessing how long Picasso would keep them hidden. Letters, diary entries, and mysterious messages kept the hope alive that the paintings were safely hidden somewhere. Interestingly, the leaked news never came directly from Picasso; if asked, he would only laugh with his knowing smile, as if he enjoyed the scandal and the attention. He never gave any clues to help solve the mystery, but it seemed like the news always came at just the right time, as if someone was guiding it.
When Picasso died, the messages stopped. No one expected anything essential to come up after his death—until something he wrote in his sketchbook the year before he died was found: "I have a surprise, a series of a hundred pictures that I painted over fifty years ago and were hidden away." When this sketchbook became part of the Picasso Heritage, each page was archived, but the twenty-sixth page“of the book was classified for one hundred and fifty years. However, a copy still leaked to the press, and that’s when the legend's journey truly began.
A hundred hidden Picasso works were sure to excite the world, especially those in the art trade. After Picasso’s death, thousands of theories emerged about where the paintings might be. Searches were launched, huge rewards were offered, and old houses were turned upside down in search of the paintings. But the Picassos didn’t appear, and it seemed they never would.
In the middle of the 21st century, just when no one expected to find them, the legend suddenly revealed its secret: In 2048, at a Paris auction, Paul Éluard’s
letters from the 1930s were put up for sale. One leather-bound folder caught the attention of Picasso fans because it contained letters between Picasso and Éluard starting from 1936. Of the nineteen letters, Picasso wrote six, and the rest were unfinished letters from Éluard to Picasso, never sent.
One of Picasso’s letters, written from the French seaside, was particularly interesting because it recalled a short but exciting time. The Éluard letters were eventually bought by a private collector who bid remotely. In the final moments of the auction, only the Paris Paul Éluard Museum and this mysterious bidder were left bidding. After the bid reached two million, the museum dropped out, and all nineteen letters went to the anonymous collector.
The mysterious collector was Boris Maxim Latsky, a scientist and inventor who had first heard about the legend from his father as a child. Perhaps no one wanted to find the hidden legacy more than him, and now he held the key in that Picasso letter addressed to Éluard from the French seaside town.
