[caption id="" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Image via Wikipedia"]
[/caption]Man sues Met to recover Cézanne
A Paris engineer is suing New York's Metropolitan Museum over a Paul Cézanne painting he says was stolen from his great-grandfather in Russia.
Pierre Konowaloff says the art collection owned by his great-grandfather, Ivan Morozov, was seized on Lenin's orders in 1918 during the Russian Revolution.
The Met received the painting Madame Cézanne in the Conservatory in 1960 in a bequest of American collector Stephen C. Clark, heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune.
French artist Cézanne painted the Impressionist image of his wife in 1891.
Konowaloff filed a statement of claim in U.S. District court on Tuesday, according to Bloomberg news agency.
He is claiming the painting, bought by Morozov, a textile merchant, in 1911, was seized illegally by the Russian government and it was resold illegally in 1933 to a New York art dealer, at a time when the U.S. did not recognize Soviet Russia.
The Met museum has issued a statement saying it believes it has good title to the painting and the lawsuit is without merit.
Konowaloff is also involved in a dispute with Yale University over a Vincent van Gogh bequeathed by Clark to a university gallery.
Yale has filed a pre-emptive suit, trying to establish its ownership of The Night Café.
The university argues in its suit that it is unreasonable for U.S. courts to overturn the redistribution of property undertaken by Russian during the Russian Revolution.
This article is from: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/artdesign/story/2010/12/09/cezanne-revolution.html#ixzz17jNYOSzU
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