A criminal investigation in southern France is putting a celebrated workshop (Ateliers Hugo) under scrutiny. According to a legal source, the court of Aix-en-Provence has opened an inquiry after a complaint from the Picasso family estate.
At its centre are silver plates and gold medallions attributed to Pablo Picasso and created under licence by Ateliers Hugo, a third-generation jeweller, which once made them.
On 10 March, Paloma Ruiz-Picasso filed the complaint on behalf of the artist’s nine heirs. It alleges fraud, counterfeiting, forgery and concealment of those felonies. No suspects are named, and their identities are not currently known. The family published a warning in the Gazette Drouot under the title “Hugo silverware”. It urged art market professionals and buyers to show the utmost vigilance, after what it called a large number of illegitimate pieces, valued at millions of euros, came to light.
Ateliers Hugo is a goldsmith in Aix-en-Provence, founded in 1933 by François Hugo, great-grandson of Victor Hugo. Picasso had been making ceramics in Vallauris from 1947 to 1955. He commissioned François to reproduce similar designs as plates and dishes in fine metal, using the traditional technique of repoussé, a hammering process. The workshop later reduced some of the works to medallions and earrings. With help from his brother, the painter Jean Hugo, François also made jewellery designed by Dalí, Ernst, Derain, Arp, Dubuffet, Matta, Lurçat and Dorothea Tanning. His son Pierre took over in 1975. Pierre’s son Nicolas, born in 1989, followed.
The family and its lawyer declined to comment. The complaint itself says the moulds of Picasso’s works were reused to make unauthorised silver and gold pieces. Duplicates followed, some bearing the same number three times, along with unnumbered examples.
A source close to the case says the Picasso Administration has identified at least 17 suspicious collections, complete or nearly so, totalling hundreds of pieces.
The first alarm bell rang in May 2023. It told the Administration of its doubts about plates it had bought at Sotheby’s in London. The catalogue for 13 October 2021 described a complete set of 24 signed silver plates, plus an unnumbered proof of Visage aux mains, with a certificate of authenticity from Pierre Hugo. The lot sold for £1.4 million. Sotheby’s declined to comment.
Pablo Picasso collaborated with French goldsmith François Hugo starting in 1956. Photo Courtesy Sotheby’s
The Art Newspaper reported that the legal files name the seller as the British dealer Mark Maurice of the now-dissolved gallery Masterpiece. A source says he allegedly produced documents showing he commissioned a set of plates and a set of medallions from the Ateliers Hugo between 2017 and 2020.
In summer 2023, the Musée Magnelli in Vallauris showed another set of 24 silver plates, along with gold medallions attributed to Picasso. The Administration objected, finding they carried no number, mark or punch, as the law requires. Nicolas Hugo accepts those facts. He says they were author’s copies made for the show, labelled in the catalogue as not for sale, and that he recovered them and had them melted afterwards. The museum did not respond to a request for comment.
Bonhams France entered the picture in June 2023. It asked the Administration for permission to reproduce silverware in a catalogue for a 95-lot sale from the Ateliers Hugo. Works by Ernst, Derain and Cocteau were included, each valued between €400 and €50,000. The most valuable were 59 pieces made by or after Picasso. On 26 September the Administration told the auction house it considered these unauthorised editions. Bonhams delayed the whole sale, just two days before it was due to take place.
Nicolas Hugo says he launched the sale following strong results at Bonhams UK, with pieces produced by his father and grandfather. When dealers flagged possible duplicates, he says, he agreed to withdraw it and helped the Administration identify them. Bonhams declined to comment. According to the source, the Picasso lots were sequestered when a British financial firm, Suros Capital, tried to recover them as collateral for a €256,000 loan. A Suros spokesperson confirmed this, adding that the loan was secured against a range of assets that are progressively realised, so the company expects to be repaid in full.
In November 2023, a Bonhams France representative told the Administration that a Spanish collector wanted to sell 24 silver plates, estimated at £900,000. Bonhams refused again. The Administration claims the same collector sold another set of 24 silver plates and one of 24 gold medallions in private sales through Bonhams in London in 2022. Neither the auction house nor the collector commented.
Nicolas Hugo says he has not been interviewed and does not know the content of the complaint. He argues that any criminal case can only concern the time of his father and grandfather, which would fall under the statute of limitations and involve people now dead. The reproduction rights, he says, died with them, so he never minted any Picasso creation.
He does not have the legal status of a goldsmith. He admits signing some certificates of authenticity, but only to confirm his father’s own signature.
He calls himself a self-taught art dealer. He worked as a gallery assistant in Paris at around age 20, then moved to London, and now works as an artist agent and curator. His father became very ill in 2018, Les Hardis told him, and he decided to take over the workshop. From 2019, he says he helped showcase its heritage, for memorial and commercial reasons, staging shows in Barcelona and Vallauris and starting the Bonhams sale. He insists he never took over the company and was not his father’s partner. Duplicates from his father’s period exist on the market, he says, but he does not know who made them, who sold them at Sotheby’s in 2021, or anything about the Spanish collector’s three sets.
The inquiry is still preliminary, and the company is in limbo. Pierre Hugo died in October 2023