New fight over Picasso painting given up under Nazi pressure

Nov 11, 2006, 18:32 GMT

New York - The heir of an art collector forced by the Nazis to give up a valuable Pablo Picasso portrait will continue his legal fight to get the painting back, his lawyer said Friday.

In a filing with the New York state supreme court, Julius H Schoeps seeks to have the artwork returned, his lawyer John Byrne told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on Friday.

The Absinthe Drinker painting, also known as Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto, was given up by its earlier owner Paul von Mendelsohn-Bartholdy under pressure from the Nazis and its true owners are his heirs, the court filing said.

The painting's current owner, composer Andrew Lloyd Weber, was to have sold the painting valued at 60 million dollars at Christie's auction house this week, but the sale was halted due to the pending lawsuit.

Schoeps had also filed a lawsuit in the US District Court in Manhattan to stop the sale. That request was dismissed, but Christie's said it decided to withdraw the painting because of the second law suit.

Byrne could not say when a decision might be reached in the case.

Schoeps, head of the Moses Mendelssohn Centre for European-Jewish Studies in Potsdam, Germany, on Friday also announced a conference on restitution of art seized by the Nazis will be held in Germany next year.

The meeting in autumn 2007 will seek to set guidelines for museums, art dealers and auction houses for artwork seized by the Nazis or as war booty, Schoeps said.

He said there was no link between the battle over the Picasso work and the planned conference.