Pablo Picasso: “The dream”, 1932

Picasso’s The Dream damaged by its owner

The work “The dream” (“La rêve“) painted in 1932 by Pablo Picasso, depicting her lover Marie-Therese Walter sitting on a red armchair with her eyes closed, has been seriously damaged by its owner, the Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn, who accidentally plunged his elbow into the canvas, causing a considerable hole in it.

Wynn had agreed to sell the sensual painting to the also billionaire Steven Cohen for an astonishing $139 million, which would be the highest price ever paid for a painting, surpassing the $135 million paid for Gustav Klimt’s “Adele Bloch bauer” (if you want to see the 10 most expensive paintings ever sold, follow this link), but, after the unfortunate accident, he has decided to keep the painting, considering the incident as “an omen”, although I guess that Mr. Cohen would have also reconsidered the acquisition.

“The dream” had been the star of the 1997 auction of the Ganz collection of modern Art, being sold for $48.4 million in an extremely successful sale in which other works by Pablo Picasso, as a version of “Women of Algiers” , were sold for exceptional prices.