Blind art dealer gives millions to deli worker in will
A BLIND art dealer changed his will just days before his death to leave his fortune to a deli worker.
Andre Zarre, who ran three galleries in New York and had a personal collection said to be worth millions, stunned his family by making Jose Yeje the sole inheritor.
Unmarried Mr Zarre died aged 78 after a fall in July. He had struck up an unlikely friendship with Mr Yeje, 50, who became his ‘caretaker’ as his health deteriorated, helping him around his Park Avenue flat in Manhattan. Mr Zarre, once one of New York’s most influential contemporary art dealers, visited the deli where Mr Yeje worked six times a week, and eventually bought it last year.
But questions have been raised over how the blind man signed the will and his family are considering legal action. ‘How did he sign his name? Did he know what he was signing?’ asked Phillys Dubrow, a Manhattan lawyer who had previously represented him.
After the dealer’s death, Mr Yeje called Mr Zarre’s cousin in England to say he was the sole inheritor.
‘I was shocked,’ Arkadiusz Tomasik told The New York Post. ‘For more than 30 years, he said that he would leave us everything.’
Last month, Mr Yeje wrote to Mr Tomasik ‘offering $45,000 (£38,000) cash and land that Zarre owned in Poland in exchange for not challenging the will’. Mr Yeje did not comment on the will. He said Mr Zarre, who had coronavirus, was struggling to walk, and had heart problems, diabetes and gout.
‘I washed him, I bought his groceries and fed him,’ he said. ‘He trusted me and I took care of him. He was almost on the verge of coming to live with me.’
But Mr Zarre’s neighbours paint a different picture. A worker at the Park Avenue complex said: ‘Nobody liked him here... He just took over his life.’