Judge dismisses Holocaust restitution claim to Guggenheim’s Blue Period Picasso
Last year, a complex restitution case was brought to a federal judge in New York. The case was brought by the heirs of German-Jewish art collectors, who claimed that their ancestors had been forced to sell Pablo Picasso’s La Repasseuse under duress in 1938 while fleeing persecution from Nazi forces.
The heirs of these collectors were reportedly demanding the return of the painting, currently owned by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and on-display at their museum in New York, or up to $200million (just under £160m) in compensation. The painting was originally sold in 1938 by Karl and Rosi Adler, the ancestors of the current claimants.
The case was originally brought by the great-grandchild of the Adlers, Thomas Bennigson, who is currently working as a lawyer in California. Soon after, more relatives of the original sellers joined the claim.
Now, a New York federal judge has dismissed the restitution claim against the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation due to a lack of evidence that the Adler couple had sold the painting under duress. The judge also noted that the eight Alder heirs involved in the claim had failed in their appeal to the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (Hear) Act of 2016 because Adler family members had been aware of the painting’s location for upwards of 40 years.
Prior to the rise of fascism in Germany during the 1930s, Karl Adler was a wealthy and successful man and the chairman of the board of a leather goods manufacturing company in Baden-Baden. However, as the Nazi Party grew in popularity, and began implementing horrific policies against the Jewish population, Karl and his wife, Rosi, were forced to sell their belongings, including La Repasseuse, and flee persecution.
Picasso completed the work during his ‘Blue Period’ in 1904 at the age of only 22. The oil painting portrays a woman ironing and could be theorised to represent his own desolation and isolation after having relocated to Paris.
The Guggenheim Foundation noted that museum curators had contacted the Adler family prior to the museum’s acquisition of the painting in 1974. In his comments, Judge Borrok noted that the museum had “asked specific questions about the painting’s provenance to which the Adlers never in any way indicated that the sale was tainted by duress as the plaintiffs now allege”.
