Portrait of an Old Man: The Finest and Best Early Picasso

This exquisitely detailed masterpiece is arguably Pablo Picasso’s finest work as a conventional artist prior to his departing for Paris and adopting the abstract and cubist techniques that made him one of the world’s most famous artists. (the other candidate for his finest traditional painting is the “Lady in White Lace” which is also available from the same collection”). This masterpiece is signed Pablo Picasso, Barcelona. 1897, thus making it one of this first works signed without using his “Ruiz” middle name. This great work of art is known to have been hanging in the Amando Reveron hall of the Caracas Museum of Contemporary Art – which is where the museum displayed its most important paintings. It appears to have been archived and sold to raise funds to help pay for the operation of the financially-pressed museum. There is a signed Sofia Imber certificate of authenticity attached verso using the Chavez government’s newly approved name of the museum – almost certainly one of the last she signed as she was soon dismissed as the Museum’s director soon after its name was changed by the Chavez government for selling off paintings in the museum’s collection in order to continue paying the museum’s staff when Venezuela’s economy collapsed as a result of the Chavez regime’s political and economic policies.