Castoff Picasso `Kiss' May Raise $15 Million for Dallas Museum ,Yazzy's at www.williamverdult.com

"Le Baser (The Kiss)" by Pablo Picasso, 1969, is shown in an undated handout images released to the media on March 13, 2008. Source: Sotheby's via Bloomberg News

According to Bloomberg News -- Pablo Picasso's ``The Kiss,'' a collector's castoff, will be auctioned for as much as $15 million by Sotheby's New York in May to raise money for the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas.

Picasso's 1969 painting of a couple embracing and 200 other works from the Raymond and Patsy Nasher estate will be auctioned at four sales from May 7 to May 22, Sotheby's said in a statement. They include a 1962 Picasso image of an artist's studio and works by Jean Dubuffet, Alberto Giacometti, Jasper Johns, Franz Kline and Roy Lichtenstein.

Nasher, a Dallas real-estate developer who died a year ago, built a sculpture collection valued at $350 million that he left to his eponymous foundation. It operates the Renzo Piano-designed Nasher Sculpture Center. He also accumulated art that doesn't fit with the sculpture museum's shows of modern and contemporary objects.

``What's being sold isn't vital to the center,'' said Elliot Cattarulla, the Nasher Foundation's executive director, in a telephone interview yesterday. ``We have everything from Rodin to Tony Cragg, James Turrell and Jonathan Borofsky.'' Borofsky's ``Walking to the Sky,'' a stainless-steel pole with fiberglass figures ascending, was on show at the Nasher museum in 2005.

Proceeds from the Sotheby's sale will be used to create an endowment for the foundation, Cattarulla said.

Mall Culture

Nasher began collecting sculpture in the 1960s, installing some of it at his NorthPark Center shopping mall, according to Sotheby's. In 2003, he opened the $72 million sculpture center, rotating pieces from his personal collection.

Once his estate is settled, the collection will be owned by the Nasher Foundation, which ``will dedicate itself to the maintenance of the sculpture museum, and also knowledge about sculpture,'' Cattarulla said.

The value of Nasher's bequest is about $500 million, including the construction of the sculpture center and money still to come from his estate, the foundation estimated.

The foundation may continue to buy sculpture, Cattarulla said. ``Ray was buying till the end, and I reckon we'll continue to buy, once we know how much money we'll get.''

Comments

[billy bob jones]

it looks more like he is forcing his toung down her throat!!!