Guggenheim Museum sued by family demanding return of Picasso painting sold by their Jewish ancestors

The Guggenheim museum is facing a lawsuit from a Jewish family who say a renowned art dealer took advantage of their ancestors after he bought them a Pablo Picasso painting while they were escaping from the Nazis in 1938.

The Spanish artist’s 1904 work, Woman Ironing (La repasseuse), was donated to the Guggenheim in 1978 by the family of art dealer Justin Thannhauser, who bought the painting from Karl and Rosi Adler as the couple tried to flee to South America.

According to the lawsuit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, Thannhauser, a lifelong friend of Picasso’s, paid the Adlers $1,552 for the painting. Thannhauser’s family gave the painting to the Guggenheim Foundation in 1976.

The lawsuit, filed by Adler’s relatives, including his grandchildren, says the couple would never have sold for that price if they hadn’t faced persecution, according to the New York Post.

In 2012, a new york times article called Woman Ironing ‘one of the [Guggenheim museum’s] most prized possessions.

According to the lawsuit, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, Justin Thannhauser, shown here, paid the Adlers $1,552 for the painting.

The family says the painting is “in the wrongful possession of the Guggenheim.” The lawsuit estimates the painting is worth between $100 million and $200 million.

The Adler family bought the painting from Thannhauser’s father, Heinrich, in 1916 in Munich.

Following the rise of Hitler, the Adlers saw their lives “shattered” when Hitler rose to power.

During that period, Karl Adler considered selling the painting, seeking $14,000, about $300,000 in today’s money, for the work, but ultimately opted to keep it.

Less than a year before World War II began, in 1938, the couple had no choice but to sell as a result of Nazi policies that stripped them of jobs and opportunities.

They sold the painting to Thannhauser for just $1,552, about $32,000 in 2023 money. Thannhauser later fled his homeland and settled in New York. He donated the Picasso and many other works to the Guggenheim, upon his death in 1976.

The couple left Germany and spent time hopping around Europe even as World War II broke out. In 1940, he won passage to Argentina.

In 2012, a New York Times article called Woman Ironing ‘one of the [Guggenheim museum’s] most prized possessions’

One section of the lawsuit says: ‘Thannhauser was buying comparable masterpieces from other German Jews fleeing Germany and profiting from their misfortune.

“Thannhauser was well aware of the plight of Adler and his family, and that but for Nazi persecution, Adler would never have sold the painting when he did at that price,” according to the Post.

Rosi Adler died in 1946 in Buenos Aires and Karl died at the age of 85 in 1957 while returning to Germany. It took until now for the family to realize that they could try to reclaim the painting.

The lawsuit cites the 2016 Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act as the legal basis for returning the painting.

According to the Guggenheim website, Picasso ‘imbued his subject with a poetic, almost spiritual presence, making it a metaphor for the misfortunes of the working poor’.

Picasso painted the work in 1904 at the age of 22.

The New York Times reported in 1978 that Woman Ironing was given to the Guggenheim along with van Gogh’s Mountains in Saint-Remy, Manet’s Woman Before a Mirror, and two Renoir paintings.

The New York Times reported in 1978 that Woman Ironing was given to the Guggenheim along with van Gogh’s Mountains at Saint-Remy, Manet’s Woman Before a Mirror, and two Renoir paintings.

The piece refers to Woman Ironing exhibited in Munich in 1913 in what was the first public retrospective of Picasso’s work.

The article also refers to Thannhauser collecting art around the time of the rise of the Nazis as his “heroic period”.

The painting suffered significant damage in 1952 while on temporary display in Paris when a thief tried to remove it from the frame. He didn’t get the paint, but the canvas needed long repairs.

In 2009, a similar claim was made against New York museums regarding Picasso’s works Boy Leading a Horse and Le Moulin de la Galette, both owned by Thannhauser and whose original owners wanted to return.

Eventually an agreement was reached to allow Boy Leading to Horse to remain at the Museum of Modern Art and Le Moulin de la Galette at the Guggenheim.

In the past, courts have ordered the return of works of art looted by the Nazis to the heirs of the former Jewish owners.