And finally… Scots artist finds Picasso in his attic

A Scottish artist may have discovered a painting by Pablo Picasso given to his mother by his Russian soldier father in the 1950s.

Dominic Currie, from Fife, had never taken his mother seriously when she claimed that she had a painting rolled up in a suitcase in the attic.

But when clearing out her house, he was about to throw a suitcase away when he thought he should open it to have a look at what was inside.

“It was a bombshell,” he told the Scotsman newpaper. “We had thought ‘Let’s just get this to the skip, let’s do it’. we unrolled it and it was sack cloth with German writing on it. Inside it there was this old oil cloth underneath and newspapers from the Soviet Union in the 50s.”

In 1998 Currie, who is an artist-in-residence at Kirkcaldy’s Sailor’s Walk Gallery, discovered that his biological father was Russian soldier, Nicolai Vladimirovich, whom his 19 year-old mother had met while on holiday in Poland in 1955.

The lovers had met up following the birth of their lovechild a year later, with Currie’s mother Annette making trips behind the iron curtain.

It was during one of these rare reunions that, according to Annette, Nicolai gave her a painting to sell, knowing she would struggle financially as a single parent.

The long-distance relationship fizzled out by the early ‘60s, when Annette met and later married a local man.

But it seems she put the painting in a suitcase in the attic and left it there for a rainy day, forgotten for 55 years, until now.

Currie said he had considered throwing the suitcase in the skip, but, curious, opened it with his son instead.

Currie said: “I saw a roll of cloth and thought that was the actual painting then realised there was a canvas rolled up inside.

“My son and I slowly opened it up and I saw a juggle of cubes and squares and thought: ‘What the hell is this?’ We had to tease it open because it had been curled up for decades.”

To the family’s amazement a Picasso signature revealed itself in the bottom right-hand corner of the canvas.

Currie (58) said: “I thought ‘No, this can’t be’ then we looked at each other and burst out laughing.

The painting has now been sent to Christie’s London to undergo a process of authentication.

If the painting turns out to be real, Currie intends to sell the Cubist work in accordance with his parent’s wishes.

He said: “If my painting is genuine, my father obviously wanted to look after me and my mother as well. For that I’d love to shake his hand, I’d love to meet him.

“Whether he knew the full value of what he gave her I don’t know. I can only assume he must have known something.

“It wouldn’t have made sense for him to have given her something which he would have known was a fake. To him, it must have been real and tangible.”

He added: “This is just too bizarre to take in. How do you cope with something like this - it’s like getting six numbers in the lottery. Should we get it framed and stick it up over the mantlepiece?”

“It’s a wonderful gift. It’s like a message from both of them to me.”

“That’s how it feels. It’s like, “Here son, we’re going to look after you. It’s taken a wee while but we’ve got there.”