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A New York artwork collector is searching for data associated to the return of his Andy Warhol portray, which he claims was stolen by his lawyer—whom he’s now suing for $10m.
In a lawsuit filed 17 April in New York Supreme Courtroom, Stuart Pivar, a co-founder of the New York Academy of Artwork and longtime pal of Warhol, accused lawyer Mitchell Cantor of absconding along with his portray and {of professional} negligence and malpractice. Pivar claims that he offered Cantor the portray, a 1977 portrait of Pivar, for $100,000, though he has valued it at $5m. The 2 males had entered right into a repurchase settlement final September that allowed Pivar to purchase again the work for $150,000, however Cantor did not honour that choice, the lawsuit claims.
Pivar says he offered the work to Cantor, his consultant on authorized issues since 2019, as a result of he was in want of quick money. “One thing got here up, I wanted $100,000 straight away to purchase one thing—it was most likely a $10m factor, which I used to be shopping for for a fraction,” he says, including that he couldn’t bear in mind what it was. He tried to redeem the portray in March however Cantor instructed him it “is lengthy gone,” in line with the lawsuit.
“The query is, how does a man like me come to do such a dumb factor as to borrow $100,000 from his personal lawyer, who he already is aware of is, how ought to I say, irregular, and the worst occurs?” Pivar says. “The reply is that I’ve achieved this type of factor 100 occasions, however on this explicit case, it’s additionally on the high of the record of dumb injudicious issues that I ever did.”
Cantor, whose enterprise Concordia Fantastic Artwork can also be named as a defendant in Pivar’s go well with, mentioned in an emailed assertion, “Mr. Pivar is understood for making delusional claims, inventing causes of motion and fully ignoring details.” He didn’t reply to questions in regards to the portray’s whereabouts.
This isn’t the primary time that Pivar has accused a lawyer of his of artwork theft. In 2019, he filed a $200m lawsuit towards his lawyer John McFadden, claiming that McFadden had tricked him into promoting a Constantin Brancusi sculpture for under $100,000. The 2 males had signed a contract stating that the statue could be offered to both Christie’s or the Philadelphia Museum of Artwork, the place McFadden claimed he was a trustee, however Pivar contends that McFadden deceived him and stored the work for himself. Based on The Philadelphia Inquirer, McFadden maintained that Pivar wanted fast money and couldn’t discover one other purchaser partly as a result of his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, whom Pivar described in a Mom Jones interview as “my greatest pal for many years”.
Pivar tells The Artwork Newspaper that he “stopped figuring out [Epstein] in 1990” and that he has hassle promoting artwork as a result of he sued Sotheby’s for $2bn in 2020. “I used to be suggested that Sotheby’s wouldn’t promote something from my assortment together with properties I purchased from Sotheby’s over 50 years, nor would my bids be accepted at any Sotheby’s sale,” Pivar says. “No cause was given to elucidate this traditionally distinctive dictum.” A spokesperson for the public sale home mentioned that the go well with was dismissed in court docket.
In 2021, Pivar sued the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam over its refusal to authenticate a portray he says he discovered and recognized as a piece by Vincent van Gogh. A New York federal decide dismissed the case in March 2022.
The artwork collector is providing a reward of “indemnification and a surfeit of gratitude” for the secure return of his Warhol portrait.
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