Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, ©Jean-Christophe BENOIST via wikipedia
The painting could be worth up to $200 million
The family of a German Jewish collector who was mistreated during World War II is going to court to get back a painting by Pablo Picasso that is now in the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The painting's descendants think it could be worth up to $200 million. In a lawsuit filed against the museum on Friday in a Manhattan court, relatives of the original owners, Karl Adler and Rosi Jacobi, and a group of Jewish nonprofits asked for the painting Woman Ironing by Pablo Picasso to be returned. The painting was made at the beginning of Picasso's Blue Period. It shows a frail woman ironing while bent over. A note on the museum's website says that it is a "classic image of toil and weariness" that Picasso made when he was in his early 20s.`
The couple reportedly sold their collection at a loss
In the court documents, Thomas Bennigson, an Adler descendant who lives on the West Coast, says that the couple sold their collection at a loss as they were getting ready to leave Nazi Germany in 1938. In the lawsuit, Benningson says that his relatives were forced to give up the Picasso for "much less than what it was really worth." Benningson says that "but for the Nazi persecution," Adler would not have given up the piece at the time he did. Adler was an art collector in the early 20th century, and he was also the chairman of a leather company with his name that was based in Germany. The lawsuit says that he was a target of a Nazi policy that took Jews' money. In 1916, Adler bought the Picasso painting from a dealer in Munich named Heinrich Thannhauser. In October 1938, Adler sold the painting back to Thannhauser's son, Justin Thannhauser. The lawsuit says that Adler sold the painting to get money to pay for short-term visas to leave Germany. In 1940, the couple finally got to Argentina. The lawsuit says that the dealer loaned the work to museums many times starting in 1939, saying that it was insured for between $20,000 and $25,000. The lawsuit says that the price was much higher than the $1,385 he got from Adler to buy it. Thannhauser gave the work to the museum after he died, many years after the war, in 1978. The lawsuit says that Guggenheim has "illegal possession" of the artwork. In June 2021, the heirs put in a claim to get the painting back.
Guggenheim flw show, ©Wallygva (talk) via wikipedia
The museum thinks the complaint is not valid
A museum representative said, "The Guggenheim takes provenance and restitution requests very, very seriously." The statement said that the complaint that was filed over the weekend "strikingly fails to acknowledge" that the Guggenheim called the former owner's son, Eric Adler, in the 1970s to confirm that the painting was still his. The Guggenheim says that no one in the family was worried about the work. The museum says that when Adler sold the painting to Thannhauser, it was "a fair deal between parties who had known each other for a long time"
Interior of the Solomon R Guggenheim museum, ©Evan-Amos via wikipedia
It is not the first time that a Thannhauser-related piece of art has led to a legal battle at the New York museum. In 2009, the museum reached a settlement with the heirs of another persecuted collecting family over the Picasso painting Le Moulin de la Galette. The family said that Thannhauser bought the painting under "economic duress." And in December, a group of people who were related to a different collector sued the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York over the sale in the 1970s of a van Gogh painting that Thannhauser had allegedly sold illegally during the war.
Jean Dubreil