Descendants of Karl and Rosi Adler filed a lawsuit to have the painting titled Woman ironing get it back. The work has been exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum in New York since 1978.

The plaintiffs claim that they are the rightful owners of Picasso’s 1904 oil on canvas, and that the painting is estimated to be worth between 100 and 200 million dollars. The Guggenheim Museum described the claim as “baseless”.

The lawsuit, filed Jan. 20 in Manhattan court, states that Karl Adler purchased the painting in 1916 from Heinrich Thannhauser, a Jewish gallerist in Munich. Karl, who ran an important tannery, and Rosi were then living in Baden-Baden in southwestern Germany. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, they were persecuted and left without financial resources.

They fled Germany in June 1938 and lived in the Netherlands, France and Switzerland while waiting for a permanent visa to Argentina. In order to get short-term visas for European countries, in October 1938 they sold the painting to Thannhauser’s son Justin, who left Germany for Paris.

The dealer took advantage of the family’s plightThey got for her 1552 dollars (today this would be worth 32 thousand dollars or thirty thousand euros), which was nine times less than the 14,000 dollars that Adler hoped to get for the painting at the beginning of the 1930s. The plaintiffs state that this is evidence that the painting was sold under duress.

“Thannhauser was well aware of the plight of Adler and his family, as well as the fact that, had it not been for the Nazi persecution, Adler would never have sold the painting at such a price,” the lawsuit says.

Thannhauser has his own collection, which also included the painting Woman ironing, left to the Guggenheim Museum after his death in 1976. The museum says the lawsuit “surprisingly fails to acknowledge” that the museum contacted Adler’s son before taking ownership. They add that he “expressed no concerns about the painting or its sale to Justin Thannhauser.”

In 2014, Thomas Bennigson, the grandson of Adler’s second child, learned that the painting may have once belonged to his grandmother. Correspondence between his lawyers and the Guggenheim Museum continued for several years before they demanded the return of the work in June 2021, the lawsuit said.

What is the legal basis?Bennigson’s lawsuit, which also names distant relatives, several Jewish organizations and nonprofits, was filed under the U.S. Holocaust-era Artifacts Restitution Act. A 2016 law allows victims of Nazi persecution and their heirs to return works of art confiscated by the Nazis.

The Guggenheim Museum says it takes the claims for damages very seriously, but insists the museum is the rightful owner of the painting. It is believed that Adler’s sale was to Thannhauser “a fair transaction between parties with a long-term and lasting relationship” and took place when both men were “outside Nazi Germany”.