Picasso family hands over artworks to pay French tax

A painting by Spanish painter Pablo Picasso entitled 'The child with the lollipop sitting under a chair' was given to the French state by the artist's family. AFP

One of Picasso's daughters gave eight pieces of art and a book of drawings to the French state on Monday in lieu of paying inheritance tax.

Six paintings and two statues by the Spanish master were handed over to the state-run Picasso Museum in Paris by his daughter, Maya Ruiz-Picasso.

The works include The child with the lollipop sitting under a chair, which likely features Maya as a child. The painting is a comment on a fearful world on the eve of the Second World War, Picasso's grandson, Olivier Widmaier Picasso, said.

He was at a press conference at the museum alongside Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot, who called the donation “one of the most important of recent decades".

The works were heirlooms for the artist's children and include a statue resembling a Polynesian totem, many of which the artist kept in his workshop.

The oldest work dates back to 1895 - a traditional portrait of the artist's father, Don Jose Ruiz, also a painter.

The most recent is Head of a Man, a cubist portrait from the summer of 1971, two years before Picasso's death at the age of 91.

They will be on show at the Picasso Museum, which has the largest collection of his works in the world, from April.

The value of the works was not given for reasons of tax secrecy, as the donation allows Ms Ruiz-Picasso to pay off her inheritance tax in kind.