Market dispatch·Aix-en-Provence
Picasso Heirs Allege Hundreds of Fake Silver Plates — French Prosecutors Open Fraud Inquiry
French prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation after the Picasso family alleged that silver plates and gold medallions attributed to the artist, produced by the Ateliers Hugo goldsmiths, were unauthorised editions, with at least 17 suspicious collections identified.
A criminal investigation has been opened in France into silver plates and gold medallions attributed to Pablo Picasso, after the artist's family alleged that the works were unauthorised. The court of Aix-en-Provence in the south of France opened the investigation following a complaint filed on 10 March by Paloma Ruiz-Picasso, acting for the nine heirs of the Spanish artist, alleging fraud, counterfeiting, forgery and concealment of those offences.
At the centre of the case is Ateliers Hugo, a goldsmith based in Aix-en-Provence that produced jewellery and silverware designed by major twentieth-century artists. The Picasso Administration, which represents the family, says it has discovered at least seventeen complete or almost complete suspicious collections, amounting to hundreds of pieces. The file does not name the alleged perpetrators, and their identity is not presently known. In April, the family published a formal warning in the Gazette Drouot, the French auction gazette, under the heading Hugo silverware.
The disputed objects have been circulating publicly for years. In the summer of 2023, the ceramics museum in Vallauris, the Musée Magnelli, exhibited a collection of twenty-four silver plates alongside gold medallions attributed to Picasso. On 26 September 2023, Bonhams was informed by the Picasso Administration that the pieces were considered unauthorised editions. Two months later, a representative for Bonhams France told the administration that a Spanish collector had contacted the auction house hoping to sell twenty-four silver plates, estimated at £900,000.
The investigation is still at a preliminary stage, and the company behind the works is itself in limbo. Pierre Hugo, who ran the studio, died in October 2023, and his five children have declined his inheritance. For the Picasso family, the case is about protecting the artist's legacy from editions he never approved; for the market, it raises uncomfortable questions about how many supposedly Picasso-designed objects have changed hands on the strength of the Ateliers Hugo name.
