No. 333 - Picasso

I heard today that 271 previously unknown sketches, paintings and collages by Pablo Picasso recently showed up out of nowhere. Apparently a 71-year old man claims he worked as an electrician for Picasso in the last three years of Picasso's life and they were given to him by the artist as a gift. They have apparently been sitting in a box in a garage for the last 30 years.

I wondered if this new cache of works would in anyway diminish the value of all the existing pieces. I had no idea how many works of Picasso currently existed. If there were only 271 known pieces of art and 271 more pieces were added, it would seem that the original 271 pieces would be worth less since there would be twice as many pieces.

But it wouldn't appear that the value of the previous pieces will be affected as I learned that Picasso produced nearly 40,000 works in his lifetime, so the total works have increased by less than 1 percent.