June 12, 2016, By Doreen Carvajal — Excerpt
“PARIS — The art dealer and billionaire David Nahmad says he is well aware of the scornful whispers that trail him when he travels to Brazil, to New York. He says he feels the disapproving stares when he enters his synagogue at home in Monaco.”
“People say, ‘Oh, David stole it; he should give it back immediately,’”
““It” is a valuable painting by Modigliani, an oil portrait of a dapper chocolate merchant in a hat and tie, seated and holding a cane. A Nahmad holding company bought the work at auction in 1996 and has owned it ever since. But the grandson of a Jewish antiques dealer says it is the same work that was confiscated from his relative’s Paris shop during the Nazi occupation and sold off more than 70 years ago.”
“Mr. Nahmad, the scion of a family of international art dealers, remains adamant that he will not settle.”
““I think the evidence is overwhelming,” James Palmer, whose Mondex Company is trying to reclaim the Modigliani painting for Mr. Maestracci, said in an interview from Italy.”
“In recent months, much of the conversation over the work has focused not on the particulars of its provenance but on whether Mr. Nahmad went to great lengths to conceal his ownership.”
“Looted art, hidden art — they made me look like a crook instead of doing real battle in the court,” he (David Nahmad) said.
“Mr. Nahmad, 69, has long loathed publicity, but he has changed his strategy. He hired a public relations firm and last week set up shop at a suite in the five-star Plaza Athénée hotel here where he met individually with several reporters.”
“Mr. Palmer, of Mondex, says a series of documents demonstrate the Stettiner ownership of the work, including the catalog for the 1930 Venice Biennale where a “portrait of a man” by Modigliani was exhibited and credited to the collection of a Mr. Stettiner. The listing for a July 1944 sale by the French auction house Drouot, which sold items taken from Mr. Stettiner, records the sale of an unnamed Modigliani picture.”
“Mr. Nahmad said he is poised to fight on in the courts.”
But he (David Nahmad) said, “If it’s proven that this painting is looted by the Nazis, I will give it back.”
This is an excerpt from this New York Times article. Full article through this link: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/13/arts/design/owner-of-modigliani-portrait-named-in-panama-papers-says-its-not-nazi-loot.html?searchResultPosition=27.
