Guggenheim sued by Jewish heir over $200m Picasso
‘Adler would not have disposed of the painting at the price he did but for Nazi persecution’
THE descendant of a Jewish family that fled the Nazis is suing the Guggenheim Museum for the return of a $200million (£160million) Picasso masterpiece.
Picasso’s 1904 oil painting Woman Ironing has been on display at the museum in New York for almost half a century. In 1916 it was bought by Karl Adler, a wealthy Jewish leather manufacturer, from a gallery in Munich.
Two decades later, in 1938, Mr Adler and his family were forced to flee Nazi Germany. He sold it back to the Munich gallery for $1,552 – the equivalent of about $32,000 today.
When the gallery owner Justin Thannhauser died in 1978 the painting was bequeathed to the Guggenheim.
In a complaint filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, Thomas Bennigson, a descendant of Mr Adler, along with several Jewish charities, said the museum was in “wrongful possession” of the painting. It requested the return of the work, or damages of between $100 million and $200 million, which it suggested was the current value.
At the centre of the case is the assertion that Mr Adler was forced to sell the painting under duress at well below market value in 1938.
The complaint said: “Adler would not have disposed of the painting at the time and price that he did, but for the Nazi persecution to which he and his family had been, and would continue to be, subjected.
“Unable to work, on the run, and not knowing what the future would hold for them, the Adlers had to liquidate what they could to quickly raise as much cash as possible.”
Adler fled Nazi Germany, with his wife Rosi Jacobi, through the Netherlands, France and Switzerland, and ended up in Argentina. He died in 1957 at the age of 85.
The Guggenheim said it takes “restitution claims extremely seriously” but has asserted the case is “without merit”.
It said: “Karl Adler’s sale of the painting to Justin Thannhauser was a fair transaction between parties with a long-standing and continuing relationship.” The museum said its own “extensive research” showed the Guggenheim was the “rightful owner of the painting”.
The Guggenheim said that it had reached out to Karl Adler’s son, Eric Adler, in the 1970s to discuss the painting’s provenance but he did not raise any concerns at the time.
The Guggenheim describes the painting, from Picasso’s Blue Period, as a “celebrated demonstration of the sensitivity, skill, and emotion with which Pablo Picasso depicted the working poor”.