Battle over Picasso the Nazis stole

Times
By Our Foreign Staff

THE US Government is at the centre of a legal battle over custody of a Pablo Picasso painting stolen by Nazis during the Second World War.

FBI agents and US marshals have served the current owner, Marilynn Alsdorf, a Chicago art collector, with an order barring her from moving the painting she bought in New York in 1975 from her Chicago home, until it is decided who owns the $10 million (£5.5 million) masterpiece.

Thomas Bennigson claims that the 1922 painting, Woman in White, was his grandmother’s before it was seized by the Nazis in Paris. Mr Bennigson was notified by an international art registry that the painting had been put up for sale at a Los Angeles gallery. The US authorities hope to prove the painting was illegally moved, which could mean it can be returned to Mr Bennigson.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,173-1332080,00.html