Displaying items by tag: ownership

A federal appeals court has sided with Yale University in a dispute over the ownership of a $200 million Vincent van Gogh painting.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week upheld a 2014 ruling by a lower court that dismissed the claims of Pierre Konowaloff. He said the Dutch painter’s “The Night Cafe” was stolen from his family during the Russian Revolution.

A long-running legal battle between the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the US arm of the Armenian Apostolic Church over the ownership of a group of 13th-century manuscript pages has ended with a compromise. The Getty has agreed to acknowledge that the church is the rightful owner of the eight brilliantly illustrated pages. The church, in turn, has pledged to donate the pages to the museum. The manuscript pages have been in the Getty’s collection since 1994, when the museum bought them from an Armenian American family.

Lee Boyd, an attorney for the church, told the Los Angeles Times on Monday that the settlement represents the first restitution of art from the Armenian genocide.

Four hundred years after the end of his action-packed life, Caravaggio is at the center of a new row as two churches in Sicily battle over the ownership of one of his greatest paintings.

"The Burial of Saint Lucy," which the baroque anti-hero painted two years before his death in 1610, has been moved several times for restoration, but now finds itself the center of spat between churches in rival districts in the port of Syracuse.

California’s District Court has emphatically denied a motion to dismiss a case about the ownership of Lucas Cranach the Elder’s life-size "Adam and Eve," around 1530.

This court ruling is the latest twist in a bitter legal battle that began in Federal Court in 2007 when Marei von Saher, the heir of Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, filed for ownership of the paintings.

They were part of a collection of more than 1,200 works owned by Goudstikker, who fled the Netherlands in 1940 after the Nazi invasion. The painting were hung outside the home of Nazi Reichsmarschall Herman Göring at one point during the war, according to von Saher’s court filings, but were returned by Allied Forces to the Netherlands in 1945.

The IRS taxed a Texas tycoon $40.6 million on the false belief he had taken ownership of a treasure trove of art including works by Picasso, Monet and van Gogh, his widow claims in court. Barbara B. Allbritton sued the United States for herself and the estate of her husband, self-made millionaire Joe L. Allbritton, on Jan. 30 in Federal Court.

Joe Allbritton died in 2012 at 87, ending a life fit for the big screen. After a stint in the Navy during World War II, and graduating from Baylor College of Law, Allbritton took out a $5,000 loan to buy land outside Houston. He made a nice profit selling the land, which was used to build a freeway from Houston to Galveston, and founded San Jacinto Savings and Loan.

A Miami-area penthouse under construction that comes with a small fractional ownership of two Jeff Koons sculptures is asking $29.5 million, according to the developer, Argentine firm Consultatio.

A five-bedroom duplex apartment on the top floors of the 28-story building, the penthouse, will measure roughly 19,320 square feet, of which about 9,370 square feet will be interior living space. Outdoor areas will include a rooftop pool, Jacuzzi tub and entertaining space overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. There will also be 7½ bathrooms, a sauna, exercise area, two dens and a massage room. The building is in the early stages of construction with a projected 2016 completion date.

Andy Warhol’s foundation sued the iconic pop artist’s former bodyguard, accusing him of stealing a 1964 painting of actress Elizabeth Taylor, entitled “Liz,” and hiding it for more than 30 years.

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, established by the artist’s will to hold his works, alleged in a civil complaint that former bodyguard Agusto Bugarin is a “patient thief” who stole the work in 1984 and is now trying to sell it “after everyone he thought could challenge his ownership of the work had died.”

A portrait by Gustav Klimt could be put up for sale, potentially fetching over $30 million, to resolve a dispute between a Viennese art foundation and the granddaughter of the woman in the painting, a lawyer for the granddaughter said on Thursday.

Klimt, an Austrian symbolist, painted the portrait of Gertrud Loew in 1902 and it belonged to her at least until 1938, a year before she fled Austria to escape the Nazis.

Her U.S.-based granddaughter, Andrea Felsovanyi, has been contesting ownership with the private Klimt Foundation, which currently holds the work.

Israel and Germany have agreed to conduct joint research in museums in both countries aimed at determining the original ownership of Jewish-owned art looted by Nazis, officials said.

Under an agreement signed Sunday by Israeli culture ministry director general Orly Froman and German Culture Minister Monika Gruetters, art experts from the two countries will undergo training and coordinate the formation of joint data bases.

A 1921 portrait by Matisse found in the private collection of the reclusive Cornelius Gurlitt was looted by the Nazis from a prominent French art collector and should be returned to his heirs, a team of international experts said on Wednesday.

The painting, “Seated Woman/Woman Sitting in Armchair,” depicting a subject in a flowered blouse with a blue fan in her lap, is the first picture from Mr. Gurlitt’s private collection to have its ownership history clarified. The team’s investigation followed an outcry over German authorities’ initial lack of transparency in handling the works, which have become known as the Munich Art Trove.