Electrician's astounding Picasso stash worth £50m

Electrician Pierre Le Guennec, who once worked for Picasso, squirrelled away the staggering trove - believed to be authentic - inside a trunk in the garage of their home on the Riviera.

The cache, dating from the artist's most creative period from 1900 to 1932, includes lithographs, portraits, watercolours, and sketches - plus nine Cubist collages said to be worth 40 million alone.

Mr Le Guennec, 71, and his wife showed many of the works to Picasso's son Claude and other estate administrators in Paris in September, seeking to have them authenticated, Picasso Administration lawyer Jean-Jacques Neuer said.

Shortly after that meeting, Mr Neuer took legal action on behalf of Picasso's heirs for alleged illegal receipt of the works. Police investigators are looking into how Mr Le Guennec and his wife, Danielle, came by the pictures.

"This was a gift," Mrs Le Guennec said from the couple's home in the town of Mouans-Sartoux, near Antibes. "We aren't thieves. We didn't do anything wrong."

She said they had decided to come forward with the works this year because they were getting on in years, and "didn't want to leave any headaches to our children" with their own estate. Her husband underwent a cancer treatment operation in March, she said.

The works did not appear to be much to her untrained eye, she said: "But even if this was a little jot of the pencil, it did come from the master."

Claude Picasso told the Libration newspaper that his father was known for his generosity - but that he always dedicated, dated and signed his gifts, as he knew that some recipients might try to sell the works one day.

"To give away such a large quantity, that's unheard-of. It doesn't hold water," he said. "This was part of his life."

Mrs Le Guennec said the couple did not intend to sell the art.

"Claude Picasso was astounded. He couldn't believe his eyes," said Mr Neuer. "Just about everybody has felt that way… when you have 271 Picasso works that were never seen, never inventoried - that's just unprecedented."

The couple first contacted the Picasso Administration, the Paris-based agency that manages the artist's estate, in January, Mr Neuer said.

Mr Le Guennec then sent a series of packages with photos of the works to the administrators, but the images were too poor to judge so the couple travelled to the administration's office with most of the trove in September.

The administrators thought they might be fakes.But they eventually ruled out that prospect because of the techniques, and the use of certain numbers in the works that no faker was likely to have known.

Police last month raided the couple's home, questioned them and took the works - which are now held by France's official agency in charge of battling the illegal traffic of cultural items.

Picasso produced more than 20,000 works of art during his long career. Hundreds have been listed as missing - a number so large in part because he was so prolific.