The painting, Woman Ironing, is housed by the Guggenheim in New York, Picasso's subject was a low paid worker. (Alamy/The Times)

We want our Woman Ironing Picasso back, Jewish heirs tell Guggenheim

Heirs of a German-Jewish businessman are suing the Guggenheim in New York claiming that a Picasso now worth at least $US100 million ($142 million) that he sold while fleeing Nazi persecution should be returned to them by the art gallery.

Woman Ironing was painted in 1904 near the end of Picasso’s Blue Period when the young artist, grief stricken after the suicide of a friend, was living in squalor and choosing to paint the beggars and low-paid workers of Paris.

In 1916, Heinrich Thannhauser, a Jewish art dealer in Munich, sold the painting to Karl Adler, one of the owners and managers of a large German leather manufacturing company.

After the Nazis came to power, Adler, who was also Jewish, was forced to relinquish his position on the company’s board and fled Germany with his wife, Rosi, on June 29, 1938, moving across borders while trying to gather enough money to get to Argentina.

The lawsuit filed by his heirs says that because Adler had been subjected to a flight tax by the Nazi government, which also blocked access to his accounts in Germany, he was effectively forced to sell the Picasso and to accept 6887 Swiss francs, a tiny fraction of the sum he had considered accepting six years earlier.

Rosi died in Buenos Aires in 1946 and Adler died in 1957, at the age of 85, leaving three children: Carlota, Eric and Juan Jorge.

Read the article by Will Pavia in The Australian.