Where is King Shlomo when you need him. Schoeps claims his dead relative sold this $60M painting under duress when the Nazis seized power. The Llyod Webber Foundation claims the Jewish owner’s widow sold it 1935 after he died. Cnn reports
Schoeps is suing the Lloyd Webber foundation, saying in a federal complaint that he was an heir of wealthy Jewish banker Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy from Berlin and that the banker lost the painting in Nazi Germany in a “forced sale.”…
And this very interesting tid-bit from law.com
According to the complaint filed Friday in Schoeps v. Andrew Lloyd Webber Art Foundation, 06 Civ. 12934, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, a Christian, placed five Picassos, including the de Soto, on consignment for sale with Berlin art dealer Justin K. Thannhauser in 1934. Thannhauser then sold the painting in 1936 to M. Knoedler & Co. in New York City.
The painting was purchased in 1995 by the London-based Andrew Lloyd Webber Art Foundation at auction at Sotheby’s for $29.1 million. It hopes to fetch between $50 million and $60 million at auction.
So What would Shlomo do?
It’s a Picasso. So King Solomon would cut it in cubes.