Sale of Picasso etching leads to £1.25m charitable donation

The sale of a Picasso etching, the most expensive print ever-sold, has led to its seller donating £1.25m to charity.

Dr Frederick Mulder, a Beacon Fellow and member of the Philanthropy UK Advisory Board, who sold an impression of Picasso’s Minotauromachie in November, has donated the money to his charitable trust The Prairie Trust.

An art dealer by profession, Dr Mulder sold the etching, made in 1935, at the New York Print Fair. It sold for over $3m, which makes it the most expensive object ever sold in the field of European printmaking covering the years 1460-1960.

The £1.25m donation, 75% of the sale price, will be used over a period of time, both in helping to sustain The Funding Network (TFN), the public giving circle Dr Mulder helped to create, and to support other social change causes.

Explaining why he donated 75% of the proceeds, Dr Mulder said, “I found myself in the position of just having sold the world’s most expensive printed image in the form of Picasso’s Minotauromachie, in which Picasso contemplates a future of personal change. I had owned the object for many years and although it was a wrench to let it go I realised that, just as the print’s imagery addressed the issue of a chaotic future, the assets the sale generated could also be used to address our chaotic future.”