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- First tokenized Picasso painting presented on the public Blockchain
- Shares which will signify ownership of “Fillette au béret,”
- Tokenization will make the art market more transparent and democratized
It is the next inevitable step in a path that has been set by Bitcoin, NFT’s, and collectibles like Pokémon cards. Pablo Picasso’s oil on canvas painting Fillette au béret, completed on December 12, 1964, will be available for purchase and trade by investors. It is to go live by the end of July 2021 and will represent the first tokenized Picasso painting presented on the public Blockchain.
Swiss digital asset bank Sygnum is releasing NFTs representing fractionalized ownership in a Picasso painting. Signum is the first digital asset bank, and it has partnered with art investment firm Artemundi to offer fractionalized ownership shares in a Pablo Picasso painting for $6,000 each.
Tokenized artwork will help investors to gain exposure to the painting
Shares that will signify ownership of over $3.68 million Picasso painting, “Fillette au béret,” will be tokenized and released through Blockchain technology and will enable a wide variety of investors to gain exposure to the artwork.
The nonfungible tokens (NFTs) of the $3.68 million Picasso painting, “Fillette au béret,” will be available for purchase by institutional investors via Sygnum Bank, with secondary trade set to take place on SygnEx — the bank’s digital asset trading platform.
The purchases can be affected Swiss Francs (CHF) using Sygnum’s native CHF stablecoin, DCHF. Fractionalized ownership over the painting will be recognized by Swiss law.
Tokenization is a tool to make the art market more transparent and democratized
Signum teamed up with Artemundi, an unconventional art investment business, to create the Art Security Tokens (ASTs) for the painting. Signum said that Tokenization is a tool to make the annual USD 60 billion art market more transparent and democratized. For example, investors will have to give only $6000 to own a slice of the $3.68 million masterpieces. And, unlike NFTs, ASTs are exchangeable (or fungible).
Artemundi co-owner Javier Lumbreras explained the importance of fractionalized ownership through NFT. They said that art objects, once the preserve of a few elite groups of collectors or museums, can now be collectively owned safely directly without the burden of high entry barriers.
Javier added that the art market often seemed to be hidden from standard view and inefficient. However, all these seem to be a thing of the past with the entry of NFT tokens.
In 2016 the Fillette au beret went under the hammer for $2.48 million (21.4 million SEK). It was the first sale of a Picasso within Sweden’s borders. The painting arrived in the country four decades earlier as one of several Picassos in the Neuman Collection. The painting depicts a child wearing a beret and brightly colored clothes. The actual artwork will never be sold and will remain at a high-security facility when it is not loaned for research or sent to a museum exhibition.
Signum, not the first to tokenize the work of Picasso
Efforts to tokenize Pablo Picasso’s work were made in the past also. In June, Sotheby’s auction house announced that it had partnered Mira Imaging with plans to auction Picasso’s work “Le peintre et son modèle” alongside an Ethereum-based non fungible token. The token was created using a sophisticated technique of scanning the painting surface to the micron and replicating the original painting. However, Sotheby’s NFT offering was canceled, and the painting sold for $3.12 million without a nonfungible counterpart.
Andrew is a blockchain developer who developed his interest in cryptocurrencies while pursuing his post-graduation major in blockchain development. He is a keen observer of details and shares his passion for writing, along with coding. His backend knowledge about blockchain helps him give a unique perspective to his writing skills, and a reliable craft at explaining the concepts such as blockchain programming, languages and token minting. He also frequently shares technical details and performance indicators of ICOs and IDOs.
