The rating of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) is such that a sale of exclusive NFTs would be an important event in the world of the art market. The descendants of Picasso who had hinted that they intended to sell a thousand of one of his works in digital version have backtracked. The heirs of the work and the name of Pablo Picasso watch their assets. Heirs of the artist announced on Wednesday that they were preparing to put on sale in the form of NFT a work by the Spanish painter. A first in the art world, denied the next day by the Picasso Administration, which manages the artist's intellectual property rights. The mess would reveal a rift among Picasso descendants around NFTs ( Non-Fungible Tokens ), digital objects with traceable ownership whose commerce has taken the market by storm. art.
"Some family members do not agree with the project and do not want their names mentioned," Florian Picasso, DJ, and great-grandson of Pablo Picasso, told the Associated Press on Thursday. Before the communique by the Administration, the painter descendant had presented, with his mother Marina Picasso, a project to sell 1010 NFT of ceramic by the artist. Dated October 1958, the object - a salad bowl partially covered in strokes of yellow, green, and gray paint - was never shown in public. A sale of the ceramics and its unique NFT was due to take place at Sotheby's in March, three months after the opening of a first, digital-only sale of "1000 other NFTs" .
Such was the project, before the intervention of the rest of the Picasso family. "The press report that Picasso's heirs were about to bring 'Pablo Picasso' NFTs into the market is completely false ," an administration spokesman told AP on Thursday. "To date, there is no NFT Picasso authorized by the Picasso estate ," said the organization in a press release.
“Perhaps we should have been a little clearer from the start ,” conceded a business partner of Florian Picasso contacted by AP. The 1,000 NFTs offered for sale on Friday would ultimately only consist of original creations by the painter's great-grandson. They are therefore in no way directly associated with the name of Pablo Picasso. As for the sale announced for March, the Sotheby's auction house has also confirmed that no NFT Picasso auction is on the agenda.
Virtually unknown a year ago, NFTs represent for some the new goose that lays the golden egg on the contemporary art market. These digital objects have become in a few months essentials of auction houses, reaching prices of several million dollars. The record for the most expensive NFT went to an entirely digital work by American artist Beeple, which sold for $69.3 million in March at Christie's. Seen in Le Figaro with AFP,