A court in Aix-en-Provence has opened a criminal investigation after heirs of Pablo Picasso alleged that unauthorised silver plates and gold medallions, together worth millions of euros, have been made and sold. The inquiry is still at a preliminary stage. The complaint does not name a suspect.
A family complaint, then a public warning
On 10 March, Paloma Ruiz-Picasso, acting for nine of the artist’s heirs, filed a complaint alleging “fraud, counterfeiting, forgery and concealment of these felonies”. The following month the family published a notice in the Gazette Drouot under the heading “Hugo silverware”. It urged dealers and buyers to show “the utmost vigilance” after what it called “a large number” of illegitimate silver plates and gold medallions had appeared on the market.
The name points to Ateliers Hugo, a goldsmith’s workshop in Aix-en-Provence founded in 1933 by François Hugo (1899–1981), a great-grandson of the writer Victor Hugo. In 1955 Picasso, who had been making ceramics in Vallauris since 1947, asked Hugo to translate similar designs into fine metal by the traditional technique of repoussé. The studio later reduced some of those designs into medallions and earrings. With introductions from his brother, the painter Jean Hugo, François also produced jewellery after designs by Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, André Derain, Jean Arp, Jean Dubuffet, Roberto Matta, Jean Lurçat and Dorothea Tanning. In 1975 the workshop passed to his son Pierre Hugo (1947–2023), and later to Pierre’s son Nicolas, born in 1989.
Moulds, duplicates and missing numbers
The complaint alleges that Picasso’s original moulds were reused to produce silver and gold pieces he had not authorised, followed by duplicates — some stamped three times with the same edition number — and unnumbered examples. According to a source close to the investigation, the Picasso Administration, which represents the family, says it has identified at least seventeen complete or almost complete suspect sets, amounting to hundreds of objects.
The first alarm, that source said, came from the Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) in Tasmania. In May 2023 the museum told the Picasso Administration it had doubts about plates bought at Sotheby’s in London. A catalogue for a sale on 13 October 2021 described a complete set of twenty-four silver plates together with an unnumbered proof of Visage aux mains, accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Pierre Hugo. The lot sold for £1.4 million. Sotheby’s declined to comment. The seller, according to the legal files, was the British dealer Mark Maurice, whose gallery Masterpiece has since been dissolved. A source said documents showed he had commissioned a set of plates and a set of medallions from Ateliers Hugo between 2017 and 2020. Maurice told The Art Newspaper he was “unable to respond” because of non-disclosure agreements.
In the summer of 2023 the Musée Magnelli in Vallauris showed another group of twenty-four silver plates and gold medallions attributed to Picasso. The Picasso Administration protested that the pieces carried none of the numbers, marks or punches required by law. Nicolas Hugo acknowledges the missing marks but says the objects were “author’s copies, made for the exhibition”, listed in the catalogue as not for sale; he says he later recovered them and had them melted down.
A sale withdrawn, an inheritance refused
In June 2023 Bonhams France asked the Picasso Administration for permission to reproduce silverware in a catalogue for a planned sale of ninety-five lots from the Ateliers Hugo holdings, including work linked to Ernst, Derain and Cocteau. On 26 September the Administration told the auction house that the Picasso-related pieces were “unauthorised”. Bonhams postponed the entire sale two days before it was due to take place. Nicolas Hugo says he agreed to the withdrawal once dealers flagged possible duplicates, and that he then helped to identify them. He also says he has never minted Picasso’s designs himself: “The rights to reproduce the items disappeared with [my father and grandfather], so I have never minted any of Picasso’s creations.” He adds that any criminal case could concern only the period of his father and grandfather, people now dead, and would fall under the statute of limitations. He says investigators have not interviewed him.
Pierre Hugo died in October 2023. His five children declined the inheritance, which sources close to the case say came with a tax debt of €2.5 million. Three siblings later told investigators they had not been aware of how Nicolas ran the workshop after their father fell ill, and that after Pierre’s death they removed twenty-one plate moulds from the studio and handed them to the Picasso Administration. Three moulds from the set were missing; the moulds for the medallions were not found. Paloma Ruiz-Picasso and the family’s lawyer, Jean-Jacques Neuer, declined to comment. The investigation continues.