Man Sues Over Picasso Stolen by Nazis

The grandson of a Jewish woman who fled Nazi Germany has asked a judge in Los Angeles to order a Chicago art collector to return a Pablo Picasso painting allegedly stolen by Nazis during World War II or pay $10 million to keep it.

Attorney E. Randol Schoenberg said Monday that he is not sure whether his client, Thomas C. Bennigson, a UC Berkeley law student and sole heir of Carlota Landsberg, was aware before this year that his family once owned a valuable Picasso.

Bennigson got a call earlier this year from the Art Loss Register in London, notifying him that the painting had been located, according to Schoenberg.

He tried to negotiate with Los Angeles art dealer David Tunkl to receive compensation for his grandmother’s 1922 painting, known as “Femme en blanc” or “Femme assise.”

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge David Yaffe scheduled a Christmas Eve hearing on the case. Late Friday he issued a temporary restraining order directing that the painting remain in Los Angeles until its disputed ownership could be decided.

But it was too late.

The painting already had been shipped back to Marilyn Alsdorf’s Chicago apartment, where it has hung for the last 30 years, Alsdorf’s attorney, David M. Rownd, said Monday. She had sent it to the Los Angeles gallery for sale.

Schoenberg said he would ask the judge to modify his order to allow the painting to remain with Alsdorf in Chicago until the dispute is resolved.

Schoenberg said a new state law, which is effective Jan. 1, extends the statute of limitations for all claims against museums and galleries over Nazi-looted artworks to Dec. 31, 2010.

Tunkl, a defendant in the suit, did not return telephone calls to his gallery Monday and his attorney, Stephen Bernard, could not be reached for comment.

But Rownd said he plans to fight any effort to return the painting to Los Angeles.

“At the time the restraining order was issued, the painting was not in California,” he said. “It’s our intention to contest the court’s jurisdiction.”

Rownd said Alsdorf “certainly had no indication of anything alleged in the complaint.” He said she is vacationing in Florida and unavailable for comment.

Alsdorf’s late husband, James Alsdorf, bought the painting from the Stephen Hahn Gallery in New York in 1975 for $357,000, according to the declaration by Sarah Jackson, the historic claims director at the Art Loss Register, that was filed with the suit.

Jackson said the register -- the world’s largest private international database of lost and stolen art, antiques and collectibles -- was asked to investigate the painting in December 2001 for a French art dealer who was thinking about acquiring it for a client.

That is when they realized that it had been stolen decades earlier.

Before Bennigson’s grandmother escaped Nazi Germany, she sent the painting to J.K. Thannhauser, a well-known Parisian art dealer, in 1938 or 1939 for safekeeping.

But Nazis looted the painting and other valuables from Thannhauser in 1940, according to a 1958 letter that Thannhauser wrote to Landsberg.

Bennigson said in his declaration that his grandmother, who died in 1994, “made reasonable efforts to locate the painting after it was taken by the Nazis ... but [he] did not discover the whereabouts of the painting until 2002.”