Picasso's Mistress Auctions Off Sketches

PARIS (AP) _ A former mistress of Pablo Picasso was selling 20 of his sketches, believed to be worth up to $2.4 million, at a Paris auction Monday. <br/><br/>Genevieve Laporte had a two-year affair with

Monday, June 27th 2005, 12:51 pm

By: News On 6

PARIS (AP) _ A former mistress of Pablo Picasso was selling 20 of his sketches, believed to be worth up to $2.4 million, at a Paris auction Monday.

Genevieve Laporte had a two-year affair with the artist in the 1950s, when she was in her 20s.

Now aged 79, she told The Associated Press earlier this month that she kept the sketches Picasso gave her in a safe because she was worried about thieves. But now she wants to part with them.

``I'm at the end of my road,'' she said.

The two had their on-and-off affair when Picasso was with the painter Francoise Gilot, the mother of two of his children.

The sketches show Laporte. Most were drawn when Picasso took a break from Gilot in the summer of 1951 to vacation in Saint Tropez with Laporte, the poet Paul Eluard and his wife, Dominique.

Many sketches from the vacation bear the inscription, ``For Genevieve.''

One Cubist-style drawing shows Picasso's face hidden in Laporte's tangled hair. When the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, showed the sketches, it called them his ``Genevieve period'' or ``Tender period.''