The Zeckondorf household has accused the co-owners of a Pennsylvania grocery store chain of promoting stolen artwork.
The Zeckondorfs, a legacy New York workplace developer, filed a lawsuit in opposition to the heirs of Robert and Patricia Weis, who personal an almost two-thirds stake in Weis Markets, accusing them of auctioning a portray stolen a half century in the past from a Zeckondorf patriarch, Crain’s New York reported.
The portray, a principally black abstract work by Pierre Soulages dubbed “Peinture 161 x 200 cm, 14 novembre 1958,” bought final fall at Christie’s New York artwork public sale for $4.95 million.
The Zeckondorfs search the proceeds from the sale — however not the art work.
The household claims the Soulages portray as soon as hung within the Beekman Place front room of Marion Zeckendorf, second of William Zeckendorf Sr.’s 4 wives, in keeping with the grievance filed in New York State Supreme Court docket.
The Zeckendorf patriarch was amongst New York’s main builders who had pieced collectively the land beneath the United Nations. His 1970 autobiography is devoted to his beloved Marion, killed in a 1968 airplane crash.
The Zeckendorf heirs allege the Soulages portray was stolen in or round 1977, a yr after William Sr. died after declaring bankruptcy. They mentioned the household reported the theft to an artwork loss registry and remained on that checklist via final yr.
In accordance with the lawsuit, the Weiss household had acquired the portray from a distinguished New York gallery, with paperwork containing a muddied provenance.
The Zeckendorfs mentioned the Weis household supplied an bill displaying their mother and father acquired the portray from Niveau Gallery in 1984 — solely the doc allegedly has “a number of inconsistencies” with contemporaneous Niveau invoices on file with the Smithsonian Establishment.
The Niveau gallery on Madison Avenue was throughout the road from the Carlyle Resort.
“The purported Niveau bill is the flawed coloration. The colour stationery for Niveau was modified by 1961 to blue from grey. The header on defendants’ purported bill is the older grey coloration used between roughly 1954 and 1961. Since Marion owned the art work on the time of her dying in 1968, the grey Niveau bill is a fabrication,” reads the grievance.
“If there was a consignment to Niveau Gallery, it was by a thief or the successor in curiosity to a thief,” the go well with claims.
The plaintiffs within the Soulages lawsuit embody William Sr.’s grandsons, William Lie Zeckendorf and Arthur William Zeckendorf, plus their cousins James Nicholson and Leslie Nicholson.
The Zeckendorf household’s current developments embody luxurious towers 15 Central Park West and 520 Park Avenue. They’re near finishing two West Village condo towers at 80 Clarkson St., the place a duplex penthouse bought for $80 million.
The defendants are Robert and Patricia Weis’s youngsters, together with Jonathan Weis, CEO of Weis Markets, and Jennifer Weis and Colleen Ross Weis. The household controls 61 p.c of Weis Markets, with 200 shops and a $2 billion inventory market worth, in keeping with Crain’s.
– Dana Bartholomew
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