A “missing” artwork turns up right as the Marcoses return to Malacañang.
Another Marcos aside from President-elect Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. has been making international headlines recently.
This time, it’s his mother, Imelda, who has caught the public eye.
In new photographs released by the Marcos family, the former first lady appears in her home alongside a Pablo Picasso painting that the government supposedly seized in 2014.
“Personally I know that what we seized was a fake. It was a tarpaulin so it’s still with them,” former Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) chairperson Andres Bautista said in an interview with Rappler.
Court records list 15 paintings seized in the Marcos family’s San Juan home in September 2014. These include Picasso’s “Reclining Woman IV” tagged by the PCGG as “missing” on its The Missing Art Movement website.
However, what looks like the same painting has since resurfaced in different footage including from the 2019 documentary The Kingmaker and a 2022 news report by TV Patrol.
Bautista confirmed that the missing Picasso artwork in The Kingmaker is the same one hanging in the Marcos home today.
Meanwhile, the president-elect’s spokesperson, Vic Rodriguez, dismissed Bautista’s statements.
“Come home. Make your allegation here so we can also hold you accountable for the many accusations and allegations regarding how you ran the 2016 elections,” Rodriguez said in a May 13 press conference.
Possibly fake
Former PCGG commissioner Ruben Carranza added that it’s possible for the recently photographed painting to be fake.
“So maybe these are two different replicas. Which is not unusual for Imelda,” Carranza said.
The PCGG estimates that the Marcoses purchased over $25 million worth of artworks between 1965 to 1984, despite only having a disposable income of $957,487 at the time.
Photos by BBM Media Bureau, PCGG, Evergreen Pictures via YouTube screenshot
