Dismissed: The Holocaust Restitution Claim for Picasso’s ‘La Repasseuse’

Pablo Picasso's La repasseuse will remain at the Guggenheim after a New York federal judge dismissed the restitution claims of the descendants of Karl and Rosi Adler.

The suit was filed in January 2023 by Adler descendant Thomas Bennigson, who claimed that Karl Adler sold the painting under duress to art dealer Justin K. Thannhauser to pay for his family's flight to Argentina in 1938. Bennigson, who was soon joined by other relatives in the claim, demanded the return of the work or monetary compensation equal to the painting's current estimated value of $150 to $200 million.

La repasseuse was painted in 1904, the final year of Picasso's Blue Period. It was purchased by Ambroise Vollard, and then displayed at the first Picasso retrospective, mounted in Munich in 1913 by the Moderne Gallerie Heinrich Thannhauser, established by Justin Thannhauser's father, Heinrich. Three years later, it was purchased by Adler. In 1931, the painting was appraised at $14,000. In 1938, Adler sold it to the younger Thannhauser for $1,552. Thannhauser loaned the painting and other pieces from his collection to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in 1963. These then permanently entered the Guggenheim's collection two years after his death in 1976.

Justice Andrew Borrock dismissed the claim on the grounds that the plaintiffs failed to provide convincing evidence of "actionable duress." Borrock wrote that "Nothing was threatened that would happen specifically if Adler refused to sell the Painting to J. Thannhauser [who was also Jewish] when he did or at the price he did either by the Nazis or anyone collaborating with the Nazis."

Furthermore, Bennigson founded his claim on the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016, which gives heirs up to six years after a work's discovery to file a claim. At the time of Thannhauser's bequest, the Guggenheim reached out to Karl Adler's son, Erik, who raised no issues about La repasseuse's sale or ownership. Justice Borrock wrote in his decision that "in 1974, and prior to acquiring the Painting, the Guggenheim contacted the Adlers and asked specific questions about the Painting's provenance to which the Adlers never in any way indicated that the Sale was tainted by duress as the plaintiffs now allege."