Boris Heger/AP
- Pablo Picasso's heirs are selling digital art pieces based off of one of the artist's ceramic works.
- Picasso's granddaughter Marina and her son Florian are selling 1,010 digital assets of a ceramic bowl by the artist.
- "We're trying to build a bridge between the NFT world and the fine art world," Florian Picasso said.
Heirs of famed Spanish artist Pablo Picasso are bringing one of the iconic artist's ceramic works into the 21st century.
Picasso's granddaughter, Marina Picasso, and her son Florian Picasso are venturing into the world of crypto, turning one of the iconic artist's ceramic works into more than a thousand digital art pieces for sale, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.
The Picassos are planning on selling 1,010 non-fungible tokens (NFTs) — a digital asset valued in cyptocurrency — of an artwork that has never been seen publicly before.
"We're trying to build a bridge between the NFT world and the fine art world," Florian Picasso told the AP.
"I think it fits within Picasso's legacies because we are paying tribute to him and his way of working, which was always being creative," he said, adding that "everything is evolving."
Marina Picasso told the AP that the ceramic bowl that the digital art pieces would be based on dates back to October 1958.
"It's a work that represents a face, and it's very expressive," she said. "It's joyful, happy. It represents life … It's one of those objects that have been part of our life, our intimate lives — my life with my children."
The digital art sale marks the entry of a world-renowned artist into the NFT industry, where lesser known artists have found success and sold works for up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Florian Picasso's manager Cyril Noterman and the project's publicist Kathryn Frazier told AP that Sotheby's would host the auction for the NFT as well as the actual ceramic bowl. But a spokesperson for Sotheby's said it "has clarified that it will not be selling an NFT of a work by Pablo Picasso."
Representatives for Sotheby's did not immediately return Insider's request for comment.