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The Modigliani Institut (Archives legales Amedeo Modigliani), located in Paris-Rome......... Claims that the recently auctioned work at Bonhams, London is a fake.

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The news that the billionaire New York art dealers David Nahmad and his son Helly were being sued for the return of a 1918 work by Modigliani allegedly looted by the Nazis made it to the British and American tabloid press in November.

Now, in a legal twist, lawyers acting on behalf of the Nahmad family say that the case is unfounded because the Manhattan-based Helly Nahmad Gallery does not own the work.

In court papers, the Nahmads’ legal team says instead that an organisation called the International Art Center (IAC) possesses the piece and that “Helly Nahmad Gallery never owned the painting [which] is not in New York State… the plaintiff has sued the wrong defendant.” But lawyers for Philippe Maestracci, who is claiming Modigliani’s Seated Man with a Cane, contend that the “International Art Center is an offshore entity used by the Nahmad defendants as an instrumentality to hold their interests in works, around 90% of which are held in an art storage facility at the free port of Geneva.

” They add that the art centre’s holdings are estimated at between $3bn and $4bn.

EXTRACT:

A French man claims a New York City art gallery refuses to return to him an Amedeo Modigliani painting that his grandfather owned until Nazis forced him to sell it during World War. Philippe Maestracci sued the Helly Nahmad Gallery, seeking return of the 1918 Modigliani painting, "Seated Man With a Cane."

Maestracci says he is sole heir of Oscar Stettiner, a Jewish art dealer who owned a Paris art gallery, and the Modigliani painting.


He says he located it in 2008, when Sotheby's published it as being consigned for sale by the Helly Nahmad Gallery.

Maestracci says he wrote to the gallery demanding the return of the painting, but it failed to respond.

Courthouse News service November 01, 2011

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The allegations come from a Russian collector that considered buying the picture in 2006 for $3m, but first made scientific testing at the Swiss Institute for Art Research.

“the evaluation from the swiss institute indicated that some of the pigments used in this painting were synthetic, produced after 1940” (modi died in 1920...)
Says he is “revolted” to see the work hanging in the Pushkin as a genuine Modigliani.
Christian Parisot, the president of the Modigliani Institute in Rome, denies all of the allegations...

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£100m masterpieces stolen from French museum 'crushed by rubbish truck'
Five stolen paintings including a Matisse, a Picasso and a Modigliani worth almost £100 million ended up in a street dustbin and were likely crushed by a rubbish truck...

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A Modigliani or Modigliani look-alike that also graced the walls of her home is not appearing in a Christie's sale because it has not been authenticated.

Marc Porter, chairman of Christie's Americas, will not go so far as to call the painting a fake.

The field of Modigliani attributions is hotly contested, he says, while a new catalogue raisonné is in the work.

But selling Taylor's painting is clearly a risk that Christie's wasn't willing to take.

EXTRACT:

Officials traced an unexpected link between Hadzic and the more savory world of fine art.
The mystery behind the Modigliani work -- and how it came to feature in the arrest of one of the world’s most wanted men -- is now the primary focus of a team of Serbian investigators and a number of international art experts....
According to a Reuters report from September 2007, “Portrait of a Man” had been unknown to the art world before it surfaced in the Balkan country.
The report said the painting was owned by an unnamed Serbian collector and quotes Christian Parisot, the president of the Modigliani Institute, as saying that after a 17-year verification process, the painting had been deemed authentic.
The portrait could have been stolen but not reported to the Art Loss Register,
it could have been in the possession of its undetermined,
but rightful owner all along, or it could be a fake.
Even after Goran Hadzic’s modern art mystery is solved, there may be more in store.