On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the death of Pablo Picasso approaching – he died on April 8, 1973 – a long-running dispute over the return of one of his Nazi-era paintings is back in the headlines.
The German Minister of Culture calls on the Modern Pinakothek in Munich to arrange a hearing solve the question of who actually owns Ms Solera 1903 Blue Age masterpiece by the Spanish artist that has since disappeared from the museum’s galleries at least January.
The heirs of German-Jewish banker and art collector Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy claim that in 1934 he was forced by Nazi persecution to sell the work to Jewish dealer Justin K. Thannhauser as part of a group of five Picassos. The heirs have been asking since 2009 for the return of the painting, a portrait of the wife of Picasso’s friend, Benet Soler, a tailor.
The Bavarian State Painting Collections, which oversee the Pinakothek, purchased the work from Thannhauser in 1964. Arguing that Von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, who died in 1935, did not sell the painting under duress, she has until ‘now refused to let the dispute appear before the German Foundation for Lost Art Advisory Board.
Pablo Picasso, Portrait of Angel Fernández de Soto (The Absinthe Drinker)1903. The painting sold at Christie’s London in 2010 for £34.7 million ($51.8 million) following a settlement between Andrew Lloyd Webber and the heirs of Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, a German Jewish collector forced to sell it under the Nazi regime.
“I expressly call on the Bavarian Land government to finally pave the way for the Bavarian Land painting collections to accept an examination by the advisory commission. It is now too late,” said Claudia Roth, German curator at culture and the media, in the German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung this week.
Roth’s predecessor, Monika Grütters, had also asked Bavaria to agree to the case being heard. In 2016, the New York Times reported, she wrote a letter to the heirs stating that all state-run and state-funded museums must refer requests for advisory board hearings to the panel.
Germany created the Advisory Commission, formerly known as the Limbach Committeein 2003 following its adoption of the Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art in 1998.
The 44 nations that signed the principles pledged to ensure that art and other cultural property lost during the Nazi regime is returned to its rightful owners, regardless of statutes of limitations. In Germany, there are few legal remedies to seek restitution for Holocaust-era losses without the commission, although both parties must agree to a hearing.
Pablo Picasso, The Moulin de la Galette (circa 1900). Collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Thannhauser Collection, Gift, Justin K. Thannhauser, 1978.
The museum initially refused to do so in 2011, insisting there was no evidence the sale was forced. “The commission,” said Pinakothek legal counsel Robert Kirchmaier The Spiegel, “was founded for ambiguous cases. Not for clearheads like this.
In 2013, The heirs of Von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy have filed a complaint seeking the return of Ms Soler against the State of Bavaria in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The court concluded in 2014 that the United States had no jurisdiction in the case under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act 1976, and the The Supreme Court dismissed the family’s appeal in 2016. This left them with little means to secure his return.
But the Von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy heirs found more success in their attempts to recover four other works by Picasso that their ancestor sold to Thannhauser.
Pablo Picasso, Boy driving a horse (1905-06). Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
In New York, the family reached a settlement with the modern Art Museum and the guggenheim museum in 2009, two years after the museums initially asked a court declare them the rightful owners of two Picassos.
Instead, the heirs got $5 million, according to The Spiegelwhile the Guggenheim kept The Moulin de la Galettea gift from Thannhauser, and the MoMA retained Boy driving a horse (1905–06), donated to the institution by CBS founder William S. Paley.
The family too settled with the Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation in 2010, after preventing the planned 2006 sale of Picasso Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Sotoalso known as The absinthe drinker, from the composer’s collection. It eventually sold later that year at Christie’s London for £34.7 million ($51.8 million).
Pablo Picasso, head of a woman (1903). Formerly from the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, Gagosian offered it for sale following its 2020 return to the heirs of Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, a German-Jewish collector forced to sell it under the Nazi regime. .
The most recent victory came in 2020, when the National Art Gallery in Washington, DC, made Picasso head of a woman (1903) to the family. A pastel on paper from the Blue Period, the piece had been a gift from the Ian Woodner family collection in 2001. The museum accepted restitution without the case going to court. (Gagosian quickly put the work up for sale for $10 million.)
But the Bavarian state painting collections continue to deny the Von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy heirs’ claim to his own Thannhauser Picasso.
“The heirs have reached fair and just solutions with the owners of these five works, with the exception Ms Solertheir attorney, John J. Byrne Jr., told Artnet News. “It’s not fair. Justice demands that the Mendelssohn heirs be given a fair, open and equitable hearing on the merits of their claim.
At press time, the Pinakothek der Moderne had not responded to requests from Artnet News.
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