A lacking Pablo Picasso painting was spotted at the household of the Philippines’ controversial former 1st lady — as she celebrated her son’s presidential victory, according to a former formal familiar with the artwork.
Imelda Marcos — the widow of late Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos — was filmed hugging her son, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., in footage that aired this 7 days with the obvious extensive-misplaced masterpiece “Reclining Girl VI” hanging on a wall driving them.
The bombshell in the qualifications was broadcast in a news segment by the area station Tv Patrol Tuesday soon after Marcos Jr. became the country’s future president in a landslide victory.
A former official for the country’s Presidential Commission on Superior Government — a job force made to recover the a person-time authoritarian family’s unwell-gotten wealth — mentioned the painting was 1 of roughly 160 pieces of art allegedly acquired illegally by the Marcos family for the duration of their far more than 20-calendar year reign.
The abstract painting — which depicts a lady lounging on a couch with a hand on her forehead — appeared in a 2019 documentary about the Marcos family, “The Kingmaker,” before it went missing as the task force hunted for it, mentioned former PCGG chairman Andy Bautista.
“This painting was also captured in #TheKingmaker,” Bautista, who appeared in the documentary, tweeted.
It was not straight away confirmed that the painting — a single of eight targeted for seizure by the country’s anti-corruption authorities in 2014 — was reliable.
But in the documentary, the former initially lady flaunted the painting, along with other unusual antiquities and artworks in her assortment.
“[My husband] would say, ‘Imelda, I know how to earn money correctly, but you know how to shell out dollars appropriately simply because you invest in elegance,’” she claims in documentary — as the digital camera pans to the Picasso piece.
In the movie, Bautista then reveals that the PCGG had filed a motion to seize the Picasso portray and other assets.
Throughout his rule from 1965 to 1986, Marcos Sr. created spectacular human-rights abuses, such as the arrest, torture and killing of his opponent, and applying his electric power to seize as much as $10 billion in ill-gotten wealth.
Significantly of that wealth, such as hundreds of thousands of pounds well worth of art, has continue to not been recovered.