Look at me, using our beloved “Holy Grail” appellation right here in a Cold Start! And I think I’m using it pretty accurately here, because what I want to tell you about is about as close as I can think of to an automotive Holy Grail: something impossibly rare, and perhaps irretrievably lost. I’m talking about the only art car known to have been painted by Pablo Picasso.
Yes, that’s right! An art car, not unlike the famous art cars painted by artists like Alexander Calder and Andy Warhol, but this one was a 1955 Citroën DS, enhanced with painting by Picasso, creating a work that Picasso called Las Guirnaldas de la Paz, or, the Garlands of Peace.
Picasso was, of course, needs no introduction, as I’m pretty sure you’re all familiar with the artist that gave the world such works as Guernica and Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, the work that started the Cubist movement.
We all know Picasso; what we know less about is the ’55 Citroën that he painted. The car was borrowed by Mexican journalist Manuel Mejido from a friend, and the journalist took advantage of Picasso’s gratitude to Mexico for taking Spanish refugees in 1939 to secure a rare interview with the artist.
Quite broke, Mejido made a deal with a pair of documentarians from Colombia and a French woman to join him on the trip in exchange for covering the expenses. As the story goes, Picasso spoke with the group for a while, then left mysteriously, returning a while later and demanding everyone to leave.
As they approached the borrowed Citroën, they saw that Picasso had painted the car with figures, trees, and flowers, in Picasso’s signature rapid, gestural style. Picasso, delighted, told them the work on the car was of garlands of peace, which is where the work took its name.
I can barely make out the painted elements on the car in this picture; I want to see more!
The value of the car was not lost on Mejido, who drove it immediately to an art gallery, where he sold it for $6,000 (nearly $70,000 today), and gave the friend who loaned him the car a grand, which I suppose roughly covered the cost of the car? I think he probably should have paid the dude more; I mean, he didn’t even ask!
It seems that the picture above is the only known photograph of the DS; here’s a picture of Picasso with another French car, a Renault Dauphine he owned:
That doesn’t really have anything to do with this story, but I liked the picture. Wire wheels?
Anyway, the fate of the Picasso-painted Citroën is not known. It may be in the hands of a private collector, but, if so, they seem to be keeping the car a secret.
I suspect it still exists and hasn’t been scrapped or anything like that; its value was understood at the time, and it feels unlikely anyone would have lost track of the car. So where is it? I’d love to get a better look at the thing; I have no idea what its value could be now, but I suspect it could be the most valuable Citroën DS in existence.
You know, one of my favorite Picasso works happens to be one made with vehicular parts; it’s just called Bull’s Head, and is an assemblage of a bicycle seat and handlebars:
Damn, that’s clever.
And since we’re talking about Picasso, may as well remind you about how he was never called an asshole:
Where is this DS? I’m so curious now. Has it been in the same hands since it was sold to that art gallery? Has it clandestinely changed hands multiple times? I have no idea. I do hope one day it’ll be found, and available for the world to see and enjoy.
It’s also worth noting that much later, in 1998, Picasso’s family signed a sweet deal with Citroën to use Picasso’s name on cars, like the Xsara Picasso:
I wonder what old Pablo would have thought about that?
I bet he would have laughed.
And not only wire wheels, a two-tone trim panel! I don’t ever recall seeing one of those and I have all the Auto-Parades from 57 through 70 and it’s never made an appearance. Possibly a semi-custom a la Tickford in England?
The closest I can come to this was back in 1978 or so when I bought a nice, clean 1971 Peugeot 504 from a used car lot in Woodland, CA that had been picked up in France by painter/printmaker Roland Petersen while he was there on a Fulbright Fellowship.
Creamy white, it would have been a great blank canvas had he so chosen. I had no idea of its provenancet until I went through the glove box and found a service receipt in his name and the owner’s manual had a couple of stamps in it from France. I was vaguely familiar with him as I had had an algebra class with his daughter who was a year ahead of me in high school in Davis. He taught painting and printmaking at UC Davis and Washington State University.
I wonder if our paths crossed while I was living and working in the area. I wonder if seen whether he would have thought, hey, there’s my old car. Unfortunately, I never got to meet him, but I do like his work.
roland petersen at DuckDuckGo
The Xsara Picasso was such a cute car. My wife and I saw a bunch of them while on vacation years later in France. We really would have loved to been able to bring one home.
For years I worked 12 blocks from MOMA and my company (now Verizon) gave us free entry to the major museums.
At lunch I’d walk to MOMA and look at Guernica for several minutes many times before it was repatriated to Spain.
The Rothkos took up a lot of time on other trips. The Cisitalia also.
Lucky me. All those perks are long gone and I’m retired 12 years.
Ironic how the DS he painted is lost, but the art he stole is on display in the Louvre.
It’s interesting how after the DS, Citroens started to look more and more like Guernica.
Years ago, a friend and I went into a local to him neighbourhood bar in Barcelona. It was a typical little proprietor run place with a communal table in the middle of a small storefront. We ordered some drinks and the customary olives and tomato toast was brought. We then decided to order a little bit of tapas. It arrived on a rather large ceramic platter. I was aware that Picasso made ceramics (he was a dilettante and explored many mediums). When I commented on the nice reproduction, the owner came a presented a tattered letter signed by Picasso. My friend translated the Spanish and it explained something like the following. “We had a great night last week, but got rather drunk. I’m sorry we left without paying. Here is our payment, and please accept this gift I have made for you, as I am embarrassed by our behaviour.” It stated a number, kind of like a serial number or addition. Our host lifted the platter above us and pointed to the same number and Picasso’s signature in the glaze on the bottom.
The story was that the owner’s great uncle owned the place at the time and when he got the platter he committed to using it daily instead of sticking it an a glass case or display of some sort. So it was just a utilitarian part of the bar’s history.
That DS might just be doing taxi duty in Morocco or somewhere to this day.
Moroccan taxis are all Peugeot 205’s inside towns, and Mercedes-Benz W123s going between the towns. Although apparently these days there’s a lot of Dacias.
Fantastic!
This immediately made me think of this Joe List bit about how recent Pablo Picasso was
“perhaps irretrievably lost”
Yeah, as seeing how Picasso routinely beat the women in his life and how prodigiously prolific he was in his output of artwork it’s probably just as well that the DS is lost; we already have thousands upon thousands of pieces by him.
Picasso had a lot of contemporary detractors and his proclivity for beating women was already noted in his lifetime so plenty of people found him objectionable back then.
So it’d not be at all surprising if whoever ended up with that DS took it on themselves to eradicate his handiwork especially since the DS was presumably perfectly serviceable and such garnishments would only have been a distraction at best.
Jonathan Richman lived our locale for some years (Grass Valley/Nevada City CA) and would perform at our local venues on occasion. Delightful, weird, wonderful, odd, captivating all at once. Yes, go see a perfomance if you can.
Years ago, I think it was San Jose or Santa Clara and I went to a local college type bar on open mike night. He just showed up and played a few songs. No explanation what so ever. I thought at first it was a cover act, but then I realized, it was him, since I had seen him before. Didn’t get to talk to him. It would have been interesting.
Thanks for including the song! My first exposure to it was the cover on the Repo Man soundtrack. And then I learned about the Modern Lovers. Go see Jonathan Richman while you still can.
Feynman’s Dodge van enters the chat: https://feynman.com/fun/the-feynman-van/
I had never heard of that. Thanks.
We have a small Picasso print hanging in our bathroom. It depicts a shapely posterior that he somehow drew with only three pencil strokes.
We call it the Pic-ASS-o.
The Xsara Picasso (and later C4 Picassos) are pretty underrated imo. The THP Gran Picassos seem like great dadmobiles.
Was Picasso tiny or are Renault Dauphines huge?
According to the song, he was 5’3″. So if Modern Lovers did a reasonable amount of fact checking, then yes, he was tiny.
He was approximately one Torchinsky.
Considering a young, broke Picasso was in the habit of doodling on napkins and signing them to pay for his meals, he’d probably be just fine with the family’s commercialization of his name.
As to the missing DS, I believe I saw it in 1982 in Tijuana serving as a taxi, but as nothing I did on that trip would’ve enhanced memory recall, I can’t be certain.
I was going to joke about how many decades later Citroën made a tribute to that by applying the Picasso name to one of the most unimaginative and boring cars ever made.
And then you go and mention it at the end.
Damn!
Picasso‘s neighbour, famous photo journalist David Douglas Duncan, owned a spectacular, all-black Mercedes gullwing. Had he turned that one into an art car, it may have become one of the most valuable cars, ever.
https://www.classicdriver.com/en/article/wing-friendship
As for the Citroën DS, the easily removable body panels may have been easier to keep as „Picasso artwork“ than the entire car.
That was my thought as well, the car might not be around anymore, but the painted body panels could be packed in a crate someplace
If the Goddess of Peace isn’t on there somewhere, I would be disappointed.