LONDON, April 2 (UPI) -- A "mural" by Pablo Picasso, the result of art, science and wine in a London apartment, will be the emblem of a facility honoring art, science and life.
Now the so-called Bernal's Picasso, an improvised angelic pair later chiseled from the wall, has been acquired by the Wellcome Trust for its new gallery in Euston area of London, the Times of London said Monday. The Trust bought it for $495,000.
Picasso improvised the mural for science professor John Desmond Bernal at the scientist's London apartment one night in 1950.
Trust officials said Bernal's Picasso is a fitting symbol for the Wellcome Collection, a $59.3 million venue that examines linkages of medicine, life and art.
"It is a rather wonderful emblem of an extraordinary moment in the history of art and science when these two great figures and quite a lot of red wine came together," Ken Arnold, head of public programs for the Wellcome Trust, said.
Bernal, who died in 1971, was an Irish physicist who worked on X-ray crystallography and took the first X-rays of hydrated protein crystals.
