A preliminary move on disputed Picasso

The California Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether state courts can hear a dispute over the ownership of a Picasso painting allegedly stolen from the plaintiff’s grandmother by Nazis during World War II.

The dispute centers on Picasso’s 1922 oil painting “Femme en blanc” (Woman in White), believed to have been stolen from a Paris art dealer’s home in 1942 and purchased in 1975 by Chicago collectors and philanthropists James and Marilyn Alsdorf from a New York art dealer.

In 2002, Marilyn Alsdorf sent the painting to Los Angeles to be exhibited and sold by art dealer David Tunkl but later ordered Tunkl to return the painting to Chicago. Tunkl had informed her that, according to provenance research by the Art Loss Register, the painting had been stolen during the Nazi regime.

The ownership dispute was pursued in Los Angeles County Superior Court when the heir, Oakland-based Thomas Bennigson, sued to have the painting returned to him. The widowed Marilyn Alsdorf and Bennigson have since disagreed on where the case should be tried.

Bennigson’s attorney, Holocaust-claims specialist E. Randol Schoenberg, said that “according to U.S. Supreme Court precedent, the courts of this state have the authority to determine ownership of property that is in the state, and the painting was in the state at the time the suit was filed.” Schoenberg said his client filed suit while the Picasso was still at Los Angeles International Airport waiting to be shipped back to Chicago in 2002.