The Tamesis
Lawyers for David Nahmad are asking a New York court to review its recent ruling in the long-running dispute over Amedeo Modigliani. Sitting man with crutches (1918), citing what they said was new eyewitness testimony that would allow the case to be reopened.
The court ruled on April 3, awarding the painting to the estate of dealer Oscar Stettiner. In a motion, Nahmad’s legal team argued that the work at the center of the claim may have been misidentified from the outset. The lawsuit was filed by Stettiner’s grandson Philippe Maestracci, who has been working with compensation company Mondex to recover the painting for more than a decade. The work, estimated to be worth more than $25 million, was bought at auction in 1996 by a company associated with Nahmad and has been stored in Switzerland ever since.
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At the heart of the new documents are two witnesses who say they remember another Modigliani who was once imprisoned in Paris by the Vanderklip family. According to Nahmad’s lawyer, the family acquired the painting during World War II and hid it for years. Witnesses said the work they saw was smaller, darker and did not show a seated figure or a cane – which, lawyers argued, raised the possibility that the wrong painting had been the focus of the case.
This claim comes in part from a recent confirmation filed by Frédéric Allain, an old acquaintance of the Van der Klip family, who recalled being shown a hidden Modigliani in their apartment that looked nothing like it. Sitting man with crutches. He described a work about 55 to 60 centimeters high, showing only part of a man’s torso and without crutches, and said he came forward after reading reports of the court decision.
Lawyers for Nahmad said this bolstered their long-standing argument that Mondex, representing Stettina’s heirs, had identified the wrong painting. They also point to a 1946 report describing the missing work as a self-portrait — something Sitting man with crutches This is not the case – a new catalog raisonné by scholar Marc Restellini shows that they believe there is no connection between the painting and Stettina.
Mondex fought back hard. “We hope Mr. Nahmad will stop using millions of dollars to delay justice and honorably return the painting as he promised,” said James Palmer, the company’s international adviser. He added that even if there was another Modigliani in Vanderklip’s home, there was no evidence linking it to the work looted from Stettina. According to Mondex, Sitting man with crutches It was owned by the family from 1944 to 1996 and was named after Stettiner.
The filing comes just weeks after Judge Joel M. Cohen ruled that the painting, which was looted during World War II, should be returned to Stettina’s estate, rejecting the Nahmad family’s argument that there were gaps in the history of its ownership and finding a clear line between Stettina and its wartime seizure.
Nahmad’s legal team has also filed a notice of appeal.
