Suspected Picasso painting found in drug bust in Iraq

Officers in charge of a search for drug trafficking in the province of Diyala, in central-eastern Iraq , made an unexpected discovery on August 13: that of a work probably by Pablo Picasso , estimated at several million dollars, reports CNN. According to the organization for the fight against the use of narcotics and psychotropic drugs, which depends on the Iraqi Interior Ministry, three men were arrested for their involvement in the trafficking and transport of narcotics. But no one expected to discover a Picasso among them. In principle, the discovery is actually not so surprising, according to Colonel Bilal Sobhi, director of the anti-narcotics bureau: "Drug trafficking is linked to many crimes, including murders, thefts, kidnappings, rapes, creation of gangs, corruption, up to traffic in art and cultural property." No details were provided on the nature of the painting in question, its provenance, or even how it will be authenticated. Hundreds stolen artworks Pablo Picasso produced no less than 13,500 paintings and more than 100,000 engravings. He is also the author of numerous sculptures, ceramics, and 34,000 illustrations. Most of these art objects found their way into museums , but some were later stolen and sometimes never found. The International Criminal Police Organization, Interpol , has set up a database to list stolen works: nearly 52,000 objects are listed there. Picasso is quoted there on more than one occasion, his work, which continues to be exchanged at exorbitant prices, being always highly coveted in spite of everything . In 1976, 119 paintings by the father of Cubism were, for example, stolen from the Palais des Papes in Avignon, before being found intact . In 2019, a Dutch art investigator got his hands on the famous Portrait of Dora Maar , estimated at $28 million, twenty years after it was stolen from a Saudi sheikh's yacht on the French Riviera. And even more recently, a Head of a Woman from 1939 was among three works of art found by Greek police in a bricklayer's home, almost a decade after they were stolen. It should be noted that in France, the Ministry of Culture has developed software called "Collection sur mesure", similar to that of Interpol, to find cultural property that has been stolen - in particular the 2,100 looted by the Nazi regime during World War II. seen on slate.fr article by Heloise Le Fourner