Name: OAKLAND / Suit over a Picasso settled / Heir gets millions for work Nazis stole
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OAKLAND / Suit over a Picasso settled / Heir gets millions for work Nazis stole

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A Bay Area man's lawsuit over a Picasso painting that was once owned by his German Jewish grandmother and was stolen by the Nazis has been settled for $6.5 million, his lawyer said Tuesday.The money will be paid by a Chicago woman who, with her now-deceased husband, bought "Femme en Blanc" from a Manhattan art gallery for $345,000 in 1976, said E. Randol Schoenberg, lawyer for Tom Bennigson of Oakland. The woman, Marilynn Alsdorf, and her husband, James, made the purchase "completely in good faith, with no idea of its history or background," Schoenberg said.The 1922 painting, a somber portrait of a woman in whites and grays, was sent by Carlotta Landsberg to an art dealer in Paris for safekeeping before she fled Berlin in 1938 or 1939. She settled in South America and next heard from the dealer in a 1958 letter that said his entire collection had been stolen by the Nazis after they occupied Paris in 1940.The painting next surfaced in 2001, when a Los Angeles dealer brought it to Paris for sale. A prospective buyer contacted the Art Loss Register, which found "Femme en Blanc" on a list of looted works and identified Landsberg as its owner.The register traced Landsberg to New York, where she had died in 1994, and also located Bennigson, her only heir, who was unaware of his grandmother's painting or her efforts to find it. He was then a law student at UC Berkeley and has since graduated and passed the bar exam, said Schoenberg, his lawyer.Bennigson filed a $10 million suit against Marilynn Alsdorf, who had placed the painting with the Los Angeles dealer after her husband's death but recovered it after learning its history. Alsdorf sued in Illinois to establish her title to the painting.Under the settlement, reached with the aid of a federal magistrate, Alsdorf will keep the painting. The New York dealer who sold it to her -- and who also denied knowledge of its origin -- will add an unspecified sum to Bennigson's compensation, Schoenberg said. He said the settlement amount will cover his legal fees and a payment to the Art Loss Register.Compared with other U.S. legal disputes over artwork looted by the Nazis, "this is probably the largest and most successful settlement," Schoenberg said. "I'm pleased that Mrs. Alsdorf has seen fit to do the right thing."Richard Chapman, a lawyer for Alsdorf, said the settlement "makes sense for our client" in view of her age, 82, and her wish to resolve financial claims in order to fulfill commitments to relatives and charities.

A Bay Area man's lawsuit over a Picasso painting that was once owned by his German Jewish grandmother and was stolen by the Nazis has been settled for $6.5 million, his lawyer said Tuesday.The money will be paid by a Chicago woman who, with her now-deceased husband, bought "Femme en Blanc" from a Manhattan art gallery for $345,000 in 1976, said E. Randol Schoenberg, lawyer for Tom Bennigson of Oakland. The woman, Marilynn Alsdorf, and her husband, James, made the purchase "completely in good faith, with no idea of its history or background," Schoenberg said.The 1922 painting, a somber...

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OAKLAND / Suit over a Picasso settled / Heir gets millions for work Nazis stole

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