Red-hot over Basquiat
Collector sues Sotheby’s to stop sale of kin’s $30M painting
A MANHATTAN art collector sued Sotheby’s Thursday to prevent the auction house from selling his family’s $30 million JeanMichel Basquiat painting to keep it from leaving the city.
Hubert Neumann, 86, whose family has been collecting works of some of the most important artists of the 20th century, has been embroiled in a family feud since his estranged wife, grafitti art collector Dolores Ormandy, tried to cut him out of her will just before she died in 2016, the collector said in court papers.
The heir to a Chicago mail-order business fortune, Neumann sits on another goldmine of works by A-list artists like Picasso, Miro and Matisse collected by his parents.
In the early 1980s, Neumann and his wife befriended the grafitti artists of the South Bronx and the East Village, helping them move their works from the subway cars to the canvas.
Ormandy became personally involved with Basquiat, according to the lawsuit, and acquired the painting “Flesh and Spirit” in 1983, the lawsuit said. Neumann and his wife never divorced, but split up and lived separately after their three daughters were born.
Ormandy died in 2016, leaving the majority of her estate to Belinda Connelly, their oldest daughter, with the Basquiat being the most valued asset.
Neumann, who was completely shut out, challeged the will in Surrogate Court, claiming he was still entitled to a third of the estate. As the estate dispute played out, Neumann found out that Sotheby’s planned an auction for May 16, he said. Last year, the auction house sold a Basquiat from the same 1982 period for $110.5 million.
Outraged by the low estimate of the piece, he hired a lawyer to stop the sale, claiming part ownership.
His main goal in the lawsuit, he said, was to prevent a foreign buyer from taking the piece out of the city that inspired it.
“I will happily forfeit my economic interest in the piece and donate the work so that it can be displayed,” he said. “I’m a New Yorker. I want to preserve this. It’s an important cultural responsibility.” Connelly declined comment. “This eleventh hour claim is entirely without merit, and we are confident that the court will find in our favor and the auction will proceed as scheduled,” said Sotheby’s spokesman Darrell Rocha.