Monthly archive
9 headlines
Source-linked reporting
artnews.com
Basquiat Lawsuits Raise Authenticity, Liability Issues describes a New York State Supreme Court ruling allowing Italian collector Guido Orsi to pursue part of a lawsuit with dealer Tony Shafrazi against Christie’s over a 1990 Basquiat painting sale, and mentions a separate settlement involving Gerard De Geer, the Basquiat Authentication Committee, and dealers Carl Flach and Stellan Holm.
artinvestment.ru
A 74-year-old former Massachusetts lawyer, Robert Mardirosyan (Robert Mardirosian), was sentenced to seven years in prison for keeping a stolen Paul Cézanne painting since 1978. The work, Still Life Jug and Fruit (Bouilloire et Fruits), was later returned to Michael Bakwin and sold at Sotheby’s for 29.3 million dollars.
reuters.com
The Bucharest Court of Appeals ruled that artworks seized from Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena will be returned to their heirs, including two engravings by Francisco de Goya and a number of paintings by Nicolae Tonitza, Theodor Pallady, and Gheorghe Petrascu.
geigenbau.cc
The post reports the theft of a Georg Klotz violin from Mittenwald (1770) with a lion head scroll, plus three bows: a modern unlabelled bow attributed to Tourte, a Keith Sleeman classical bow with an ivory frog, and a baroque unlabelled bow by Percy Bryant. The items were in a dark blue Musafia case with brown edges and were stolen while traveling from Dordrecht to The Hague; contact details for Cecilia Bernardini are provided for tips.
nytimes.com
Sarah Lyall reports on the National Galleries of Scotland’s opposition to the Duke of Sutherland’s plan to sell Titian masterpieces, Diana and Actaeon and Diana and Callisto, from the Bridgewater Collection, and the ensuing public campaign to keep them in Britain.
geigenbau.cc
The post reports a theft in October 2008 in northern Germany involving a Stradivari violin from 1721 and valuable bows by Charles Pecatte and Maline. The page mentions specific parts and features of the stolen instruments and provides a police contact in Hannover.
theartnewspaper.com
The Art Newspaper reports that the buyer of Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I), 1963, is Philippe Niarchos. The painting was the cover lot of Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Evening Sale in May 2007, where bidding reached $64 million before premiums, with rumors later circulating about the true purchaser.
theartnewspaper.com
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Alphonse Kann association restituted the painting Smoke Over Rooftops, 1911, by Fernand Léger, which was proven to have been stolen by Nazis from Jewish collector Alphonse Kann during the Nazi occupation of France; the work is being returned to Kann’s family.
theartnewspaper.com
The article discusses how the market is increasingly used to settle Nazi-looted art restitution claims, noting that resolutions are moving through auction houses and market-related channels rather than solely through litigation. It references cases connected to Egon Schiele Portrait of Wally and mentions institutions like Sotheby’s, Christie’s, the Art Loss Register, and various museums, with examples such as the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts returning a work and the heirs of Max Stern reclaiming a work from the National Gallery of Art.