Wife hung fake Picasso after taking real thing amid contentious divorce
Le Repos' painting by Pablo Picasso
A woman locked in a contentious divorce with her bond-trader husband took a Picasso off his wall — and replaced it with a forgery she made herself.
Sue Gross didn’t wait until she and Wall Street titan Bill Gross had finalized their split, swapping out a 1932 Pablo Picasso painting entitled “Le Repos” hanging in their bedroom with her own rendering.
The original is expected to fetch as much as $35 million at Sotheby’s Monday evening.
The painting, which depicts Picasso lover Marie-Thérèse Walter, had belonged to them jointly. But a coin flip in August 2017 — amid the couple’s divorce proceedings — awarded Sue full custody of Picasso’s depiction of his sleeping mistress, which the couple had owned since 2006.
After the flip, Bill Gross tried to make arrangements for the piece to be transferred from his Laguna Beach, Calif., house to his ex-wife, sources told The Post.
But the ex-Mrs. Gross said that was unnecessary — she already had taken the real thing....MUCH MORE
