The case surrounding the theft of works from Picasso descendent Catherine Hutin-Blay has taken a new turn, as Art Newspaper reports that more than 60 works could be missing from Hutin-Blay’s Gennevilliers storage facility. “One thing is for sure,” her lawyer, Anne-Sophie Nardon says, “this case is extremely serious and much bigger that we first thought.” (more…)
Two paintings, including a classic Roy Lichtenstein held at the Sam Simon Foundation, an organization established by Simpsons co-founder. The pair of works are valued at $400,000. (more…)
Pierre Le Guennec, the electrician accused of stealing over 200 Picasso pieces from the artist years ago, has been handed a suspended two year sentence for his possession of the works, and has been ordered to return the works by a Parisian court. (more…)
The trial for Pierre Le Guennec, a former handyman for Pablo Picasso, and his wife has begun. The pair recently revealed an enormous trove of works by the artist they claim they were given in the 1970’s, and which state prosecutors claim they stole. If convicted of theft, they could face up to five years in prison and a €375,000 fine. (more…)
Thieves in Madrid have broken into Puerta de Alcalá art gallery, stealing 70 paintings worth an estimated €600,000. The thieves reportedly entered the gallery through a hole punched through the wall of an adjacent building. “This has destroyed us. It’s left us in a really tough situation,” gallerist Pedro Márquez says. “Forty years of work and they just walked out with it.” (more…)
A silver plate created by Pablo Picasso, and worth nearly $90,000 was stolen from the Art Miami fair this past week, part of a daring heist that has police still searching for the culprit. “I’ve been doing art shows all my life,” says David Smith, the owner of the Leslie Smith Gallery and the victim of the theft. “I’ve never, ever had anything stolen.” (more…)
The Art Newspaper reviews the case of Pierre Le Guennec, a retired electrician accused of stealing and hiding a vast collection of works by his former employer Pablo Picasso before attempting to sell them in 2010. Mr. Le Guennec has been ordered to appear in French court in February of next year on charges of receiving stolen goods. (more…)
German investigators have announced that they have found a landscape by Claude Monet hidden inside the suitcase of Cornelius Gurlitt, adding yet another work to the considerable selection of works he had stored away in his Munich apartment. Gurlitt had apparently tried to bring the work with him when he left for the hospital, which scholars are estimating was painted around 1864. (more…)
An Henri Matisse painting stolen 10 years ago from a Venezuelan museum has been returned to its home in Caracas. Odalisque in Red Trousers was recovered in Miami Beach in 2012 after a couple tried to sell it to undercover FBI agents for $740,000. (more…)
An Henri Matisse painting from the collection of Cornelius Gurlitt has been confirmed as Nazi loot, the Art Newspaper reports. A task-force has uncovered that the 1921 work Femme Assise was taken from the collection of the Paris-based dealer Paul Rosenberg. “Even though it could not be documented with absolute certainty how the work came into [Cornelius Gurlitt’s father] Hildebrand Gurlitt’s possession, the task force has concluded that the work is Nazi loot and was taken from its rightful owner Paul Rosenberg,” says researcher Ingeborg Berggreen Merkel. (more…)
Helly Nahmad, recently convicted to a year in prison following his role in an illegal gambling ring, is being sued alongside his father for allegedly helping to hide a $20 Million Modigliani reportedly looted by Nazis. The case, filed by Frenchman Phillippe Maestracci in Manhattan Supreme Court this week, argues that the painting was hidden through a secretive company called International Art Center, and will attempt to force Nahmad to disclose the IAC’s leadership, and where it is located. “This painting was bought at a Christie’s London auction in 1996 by IAC, and the location of the painting is a matter of public record,” says Nahmad lawyer Richard Golub. (more…)
The Wall Street Journal summarizes the deathbed agreement of Cornelius Gurlitt to relinquish his collection of Nazi-looted art works, including the exchange of national pressures, personal politics and legal wrangling that ultimate led Gurlitt to sign the works over to Bern’s Kunstmuseum without notifying the museum directly until after Gurlitt’s death last week. “It all went a bit crazy,” says museum director Mathias Frehner. (more…)
An agreement between Cornelius Gurlitt and the German government was announced on Monday, which gives state-appointed investigators one year to analyze the works seized from Mr. Gurlitt’s home. The deal bypasses the German statute of limitations for stolen property (30 years), and shows the government’s increased willingness to deal with claims over works looted during the Nazi era. “We are dealing with a top-class team of experts, and given Mr. Gurlitt’s advanced age and frail health, it can be expected that they should be able to complete their work within this time frame,” says spokesman Stephan Holzinger. (more…)
A pair of paintings by Gaugin and Bonnard, stolen from a London collector in 1970, have resurfaced in the home of an Italian autoworker, the Guardian reports. The pieces were purchased at auction in 1975 for a sum of 45,000 lira (€39 or £32, equal to £300 today), and sat in the kitchen of his home for many years, before the owner’s son noticed a similarity between the works and other Impressionist masterpieces. “The worker, it seems clear, didn’t know what they were,” says Mariano Mossa, commander of the Italian heritage police. (more…)
Vilma Bautista, the former secretary to Philippine first lady Imelda Marcos, has been sentenced to two to six years in prison in New York for attempting to sell Impressionist masterpieces belonging to the Philippine government, which vanished when Marcos’s husband was overthrown. Bautista will remain free on bail while her case is undergoes an appeal. “The court agrees with the people, the evidence was overwhelming,” presiding Justice Renee A. White said. “But you never really know what the appellate division will do on any case.” (more…)
A Virginia court has ruled that a Renoir purchased at a flea market for $7 must be returned to the museum it was stolen from in 1951. Paysadge Bords de Seine, stolen from Baltimore Museum of Art, was discovered by teacher Marcia “Martha” Fuqua, and was valued at $22,000. “The museum has put forth an extensive amount of documentary evidence that the painting was stolen,” Brinkema said, citing a 1951 police report and museum records. (more…)
Sophie Calle, Le Major Davel (1994), via Galerie Perrotin
For her newest exhibition at Galerie Perrotin, Sophie Calle returns to themes of absence and presence, memory and “the real” through the exploration of three situations in which iconic artworks were stolen or destroyed, and the subtle emotional and structural fallout caused by the disappearance of iconic works by Rembrandt, Degas, and others.
Sophie Calle, Dérobés (Installation View), via Sophie Kitching for Art Observed (more…)
A recent investigation into the collection of Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum has uncovered 139 works looted during World War II. The results of a 4-year study, the works have been placed on a website, inviting prior owners to make claims on the return of the work, including pieces by Matisse and Isaac Israels. “We know that there were doubtful transactions concerning works acquired before 1940, after Kristallnacht,” said Siebe Weide of the Dutch Museum Association. (more…)
A New York man is claiming that a Basquiat drawing sold recently at auction was stolen from him in 2000. Francesco Pellizzi is claiming that he had not seen the work since it was stolen from a drawer in his apartment, until this year, when he saw the work in a Christie’s auction. The work was sold by dealer Jennifer Vorbach and lawyer David Ruttenberg, who had purchased the work after researching the work’s history. “It changed hands a number of times, but Vorbach and Ruttenberg are not able to trace it back to anyone who obtained it from Mr. Pellizzi,” Lawyer Peter Stern said. (more…)
Despite a vocal commitment to the return of Nazi-looted works to the proper owners by French culture minister Aurélie Filippetti, the French government has taken few steps towards a faster, more efficacious practices towards stolen works. While over half of the over 100,000 works stolen from the country during the war have been recovered, a low percentage of works have found their way back to their original owners, which Filippetti blames on “the deaths of the victims and their direct descendants, and not because of a lack of will on the part of museums.” (more…)
A work by artist Jan Schoonhoven, stolen from the Bommel van Dam Museum in Venlo several months ago, has turned up at Sotheby’s, stopping the sale after a Dutch fence confessed to police that he had tried to sell the work. The 1969 work had already achieved a sale price of €214,000, sold under a different name and turned 90 degrees in the catalog. The auction house acknowledged that it had already been investigating the work after buyers became suspicious. (more…)
While Olga Dogaru, the Romanian woman who claimed she burnt works by Picasso and Monet in her stove after fearing for the arrest of her son, has since retracted her story, Romanian authorities have identified at least three paintings in the ashes of the woman’s home. Authorities found nails and tacks, as well as traces of oil paint in Dogaru’s oven, but were unable to correctly identify the paintings as the missing works. “We found remains of burned oil paintings, but whether they are the ones that were stolen is a separate question, to be determined by prosecutors and judges.” Says Ernest Oberlaender-Tarnoveanu, head of Romania’s National History Museum. (more…)
The family of late Paris gallery owner Paul Rosenberg has demanded that the Henie Onstand Arts Center in Oslo return a number of paintings seized from him during the German occupation of Paris during World War II . While the family has provided documents claiming a number of works, including Matisse’s Woman in Blue in Front of Fireplace, the Norwegian museum claims it had no indication that the work was plundered when it was purchased 60 years ago, and that the painting is now the property of the museum under Norwegian law. “We need to investigate this matter properly,” Says museum director Tone Hansen. “It is too early to draw any conclusions. We are in dialogue with the family and will continue to be so. This case has other aspects than pure legal aspects that have to be taken into consideration.” (more…)
