La justice new-yorkaise ordonne la restitution d’un Modigliani à la succession d’Oscar Stettiner
A New York court has ordered the restitution of Amedeo Modigliani’s 1918 painting 'Seated Man with a Cane' to the heirs of Oscar Stettiner, a Jewish art dealer. The work was seized during the Nazi occupation of Paris and sold at a forced auction in 1944 before eventually being purchased by the billionaire Nahmad family via an offshore company in 1996. Judge Joel M. Cohen ruled that the evidence of Stettiner’s prior ownership was "unusually strong" and dismissed the defense's claims that the painting was a different version or that the claim was filed too late.
This landmark ruling concludes a decade-long legal battle that gained international notoriety following the Panama Papers leak, which exposed the Nahmad family's ownership of the painting through a Panamanian shell corporation. The case underscores the ongoing challenges of recovering Nazi-looted art held in private collections and reinforces the legal precedent that forced sales during the Holocaust do not convey valid title, even when works pass through major auction houses like Christie’s decades later.