It didn’t work out smoothly with the “Ironer” – Newspaper Kommersant No. 14 (7459) of 01/26/2023

A lawsuit has been filed in the Manhattan Supreme Court alleging that Pablo Picasso’s The Ironer (1904) is wrongfully in the possession of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. According to the lawsuit, the painting was sold under duress in 1938 because its owner, Karl Adler, and his wife, Rosie Jacobi, were forced to flee Nazi-ruled Germany. Adler’s eight heirs (citizens of Argentina and the United States) demand the return of the painting or pay compensation commensurate with its current market price, which ranges from $100 million to $200 million. Kira Dolinina believes that predicting the outcome of the case is not so easy.

The situation, which seems to have already become familiar, is a lot of court cases in which the heirs of Jewish owners demand the return to them of works of art stolen, confiscated or sold under duress during the Nazi rule. Sometimes, as in this case, we are talking about absolute masterpieces and central exhibits of the permanent exhibition of the most famous museums in the world. The “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer” (“Golden Adele”) Klimt alone, who left the Belvedere Gallery in Vienna in 2005 by court order, would be enough for all museums to become very tense about the origin of their masterpieces.

However, the law also ordered them to strain – back in 1998, Germany and 43 other states signed the so-called “Washington Principles”, according to which they were obliged to return the paintings illegally confiscated from them to their former owners even after the statute of limitations had expired.

Open registries of missing works of art have been created, and many Jewish organizations and individuals are looking for them. In 2016, the United States passed the “Holocaust Expropriated Art Restitution Act”, according to which the most important basis for such claims is the establishment of the fact that the work of art was sold illegally or through extortion. It is on this law that the suit over Picasso’s “Ironer” is based.

The heirs of Karl Adler have more than enough grounds for a lawsuit. The provenance of the painting is known and never questioned: the canvas was bought by the Baden-Baden businessman Adler from the Heinrich Tannhauser Gallery in Munich in 1916. In 1938, the Adler-Jacobi family was forced to flee the Nazi regime to Argentina. In order to pay for their flight, they urgently sold their assets, including the Picasso painting, which was bought from Adler by the son of Heinrich Tannhauser, Justin. Here you need to follow the numbers: in 1938, the Adlers receive 6887 Swiss francs (about $1552) for a painting. In order for this figure to speak, you need to know that in a year the canvas will be transferred to the exhibition of the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum with an insurance assessment of $ 20 thousand. And a few months later – to the New York MoMA with an insurance assessment of $ 25 thousand. That is, received by Adler the amount was less than 8% of the lower of the indicated prices for this canvas.

Documents of these assessments of Picasso’s “Ironer” are cited in the suit against the Guggenheim Foundation and provide more than convincing grounds for the plaintiffs’ assertion that “Tannhauser was well aware of the plight of Adler and his family” – they say, if it were not for the persecution of the Nazis, Adler would never have did not sell the painting at that price.

“Tannhauser, as Picasso’s leading art dealer, should have known that he had acquired the painting at a bargain price,” the lawsuit says.

The Guggenheim Foundation considers the lawsuit “without merit.” First, he points out that he conducted an in-depth study of provenance when the painting was transferred to the museum in permanent possession in 1978 and that Adler’s son, Eric, was then contacted by the museum staff, and he “had no concerns about the painting or its sale.” The second argument is ethically questionable: the Guggenheim lawyers recall that the Tannhausers were Jews and that they also had to close their business in Germany and move the gallery to Paris in 1935. That is, a deal between two Jews, according to this logic, cannot be “forced” for one of the parties?

Whose side the court will take is unknown. Lawyers for the Adler heirs began negotiations with the Guggenheim Foundation back in 2017, which means that the six-year deadline for notifying the owner of a work of art that it can be claimed as part of the restitution process has been met.

The position of the museum is still unshakable. However, the grounds for the claim are almost reinforced concrete, with documents on insurance assessments of the painting in 1939, the plaintiffs were very lucky.

For the museum’s exposition, the loss of The Ironer will be a blow, but not a terrible one – only the Tannhauser Hall in the New York Guggenheim is overflowing with masterpieces. But in the conversations around this lawsuit there is another important note – that the Jews have the right to restitution of works of art confiscated by the Nazis by all means from them, no doubt. But why only them? All museums are full of things, in one way or another, illegally taken out of their habitats. Well, the news is full of such stories – then Greece demands the sculpture of the Parthenon from Britain, then France promises to give back everything that it exported from its African colonies.

There is no general solution to the problem and there cannot be. So far, the only way seems to be a trial on each specific occasion – and then, no matter how much Austria mourns, say, its “Golden Adele”, it is the court that puts an end to it.

In the case of The Ironer, compensation for the painting could also be a point. Picasso is, of course, the most expensive of the 20th century artists, but this is also a working option.