TEHRAN – A new research has revealed a National Museum of Iran’s painting attributed to Spanish artist Pablo Picasso is only a copy printed on canvas. 

A depiction of Picasso’s “Harlequin Playing the Guitar”, the print is preserved in the treasure trove of the Islamic Section of the museum as “a painting attributed to Pablo Picasso, the renowned Spanish painter”.

“In the past, there was a female politician and cultural figure who managed an Italian company that published works by famous artists on canvas, particularly those from the Renaissance,” Fat’hollah Niazi, an expert at the Research Center for Conservation and Restoration of Historical and Cultural Artefacts, told the Persian service of ISNA on Saturday.

Paintings by Picasso were also among the artworks printed by the company, he added.

“We assumed that the painting was an original, but following the research, we learned that it is a digital print produced by the Italian company, which has likely been purchased from an auction during the late Pahlavi period,” he explained.

“To check the authenticity of the object, we produced documentation, used professional photography, microscopic analyses and industrial test equipment, and in the end, all the investigations indicated that the tableau is merely a print produced about 50 years ago by a machine on canvas,” he noted.

Fat’hollah also said that the object cannot be deemed to be a fraudulent artwork, because it was not produced in order to deceive people.

The research was carried out by the Research Institute of Cultural Heritage and Tourism.

“Harlequin Playing the Guitar”, which is also known as “Harlequin with Guitar”, was created on canvas in 1918. It is kept in a private collection.

Picasso produced several other paintings with the same title.

Photo: A print of Pablo Picasso’s “Harlequin Playing the Guitar” that is preserved in the Islamic Section of the National Museum of Iran.
 
MMS/YAW