Pablo Picasso’s family Fights Over NFTs

Posted by Amanda Hadley

Descendants of the famous artist, Pablo Picasso, are fighting amongst themselves over the use of his art in a new media form. An NFT (non-fungible token) are unique cryptographic tokens that can represent real-world items like artwork and real estate. In this case, they represent a ceramic art piece created by Picasso in 1958. The rest of the Picasso estate has blocked the sale of the NFT previously, along with almost 1000 other pieces, owned by the late artist’s granddaughter and great-grandson.

Originally, the granddaughter was hoping to sell a limited number of NFT sets based on the ceramics collection she owns on her own platform. They even had singer and songwriter John Legend created a song to accompany the launch. Now that the Picasso administration had become involved, the sale of the NFTs has been postponed indefinitely. The granddaughter did state that she intended for a portion of the proceeds of the sales to go to a nonprofit environmental group who supports climate change.

The sale of other Picasso based NFTs took place in February. The granddaughter claims that the NFT is her own creation, not the original, so therefore she has the rights to sell it. The Picasso administration filed paperwork that would require it to be stated on the bill of sale, that is is not the actual work of Pablo Picasso.

NFT’s are still a very new technology and many of the details are still being sorted out, especially in regards to copyrights. “Tokenizing” real-world tangible assets makes buying, selling, and trading them more efficient while reducing the probability of fraud. That has made the popularity of them soar over the last few years. Much of the current market for NFTs is centered around collectibles ranging from artwork, to sports memorabilia, and even tweets from the popular media platform Twitter. That last one sold for almost three million dollars.

View our Picasso Gallery for pre-framed art and paintings that could fit in your home.

About the Author Amanda Hadley

Amanda graduated from the University of Kansas, where she studied English literature and got a masters degree in library sciences. She enjoys reading, cooking and playing with her nephews. Her best friend is her little dog Brady.

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