Spain court orders pyschic to pay for Dali exhumation

Spanish national Pilar Abel Martinez, 61, who claimed to be Salvador Dali's daughter, speaks during an interview in Barcelona, on June 26, 2017. LLUIS GENE / AFP.

MADRID.- A Spanish court has dismissed a paternity lawsuit brought by a psychic who claimed to be Salvador Dali's illegitimate daughter and ordered her to pay for the exhumation of the surrealist painter's remains. DNA tests prove that Salvador Dali, who died in 1989 aged 84, was not the biological father of Pilar Abel, a 61-year-old who claims her mother had a covert relationship with the artist, according to a Madrid court ruling dated October 13 published on Monday.

The court also ordered Pilar to pay for the exhumation of Dali's remains in July without specifying how much the operation cost. The arduous task involved removing a slab weighing more than a tonne that covered his tomb at the Dali Theatre-museum in Figueras where the eccentric artist was born in 1904. Forensics experts then removed DNA samples from Dali's skin, fingernails and two long bones.

Contacted by AFP, the Dali Foundation, which promotes the artist's legacy, said it still had not evaluated the total cost of the exhumation. The foundation had blasted a court ruling ordering the exhumation as "unusual and unjustified". Abel can appeal the court's dismissal of the paternity lawsuit. If she had been confirmed as Dali's only child, she would have been entitled to 25 percent of the huge fortune and heritage of one of the most celebrated and prolific painters of the 20th century, according to her lawyer Enrique Blanquez.

Dali, known for his elongated figures and wilting clocks, left his estate, which includes properties and hundreds of paintings, to the Spanish state.

© Agence France-Presse http://artdaily.com/news/99574/Spain-court-orders-pyschic-to-pay-for-Dali-exhumation#.WeYzxztxmUk

Exiled Russian artist torches central bank branch in Paris

This file photo taken on January 16, 2017 shows Russian artist Piotr Pavlenski (R) and his wife Oksana Chaliguina posing in Paris. Pyotr Pavlensky, who had has fled Russia for France after being questioned by Russian authorities on allegations of committing a sex crime, and his wife were granted political asylum in France on May 4, 2017. MARTIN BUREAU / AFP.

PARIS (AFP).- Controversial Russian performance artist Piotr Pavlensky, who was granted asylum in France in May, was taken into custody early Monday after setting fire to the outside of a Banque de France branch in central Paris, police said. Firefighters arrived the scene at around 4:00 am (0200 GMT) to put out two fires outside of the building in Bastille square, a spokesman said, adding that the incident was of "criminal origin".

Photos on social media show the 33-year-old dressed in black, standing in front of the shuttered front door flanked by fires burning outside two windows. Pavlensky, a recipient of the Vaclav Havel award for creative dissent, was taken into custody along with his partner Oksana Shalygina for causing "damage by fire", police said. Pavlensky once memorably nailed his scrotum to Red Square to denounce state power. In November 2015, he doused the doors of the FSB -- the successor to the Cold War-era KGB, or secret police -- in petrol and set them on fire.

On Monday, a Banque de France spokesman told AFP the bank's entrance was damaged but the security systems were not affected. "The building is still secure," although the Bastille branch will remain closed until further notice, he added.

Pavlensky gained a reputation for challenging Russian restrictions on political freedoms in radical, often painful performances that have won international acclaim. While best known for his 2013 Red Square performance entitled "Fixation", he also sewed his lips together to protest against the jailing of members of the feminist punk group Pussy Riot. He has also wrapped himself in barbed wire and chopped off part of his ear.

After the FSB stunt, Pavlensky was handed a fine of 500,000 rubles ($8,700, 7,400 euros) and released after being found guilty of damaging a cultural site. Pavlensky spent a month last year in a notorious psychiatric hospital undergoing state-ordered tests of his sanity that found him sound of mind.

© Agence France-Presse http://artdaily.com/news/99575/Exiled-Russian-artist-torches-central-bank-branch-in-Paris#.WeYy9ztxmUk

Nazi-looted Pissarro painting at centre of legal tussle

Camille La Cueillette des pois, 1887. Gouache, 53,3 x 64,4 cm. Bruce et Robbi Toll – Archives du musée Camille-Pissarro, Pontoise / droits réservés. by Juliette Montesse

PARIS (AFP).- A painting by impressionist master Camille Pissarro that was seized from its French Jewish owner during World War II is at the centre of a court battle beginning Tuesday in Paris after surfacing at an exhibition. "La Cueillette des Pois" (Picking Peas), a gouache from 1887, emerged earlier this year on display at the French capital's Marmottan Museum, more than 70 years after being snatched from art collector Simon Bauer in Nazi-occupied France.

A court will on Tuesday begin examining who are the rightful owners -- Bauer's descendants or an American couple who say they had no idea as to its wartime fate when they bought it at auction in 1995. Bauer, a self-made businessman, was among the thousands of French Jews who were rounded up for deportation in 1944. He narrowly escaped being sent to the Nazi death camps due to a train drivers’ strike. "La Cueillette des Pois" was one of 93 works that were confiscated from him before he was sent to the Drancy internment camp near Paris and sold on by an art dealer.

On his release in 1944, he immediately began looking for his paintings but had only managed to recover a fraction of the works by his death in 1947. His family then took up the hunt, but lost all trace of the Pissarro for half a century before it turned up at the Marmottan, on loan from its current owners for a major retrospective of the artist's work. Bauer's grandson Jean-Jacques Bauer, 87, immediately filed a legal claim to prevent the painting leaving France while beginning a process to try wrest it back from Bruce Toll and his wife Robbi.

In May, a court granted his request to have it impounded in France pending a ruling on its on ownership. 'Free the painting' The Tolls, patrons of Washington and Tel Aviv Holocaust museums who bought the work at Christie's auction house in New York, say they did so in good faith, unaware it was wartime loot. "It is not Mr Toll, who bought this painting at public auction in 1995, who should pay for the crimes of Vichy," the couple's lawyer Ron Soffer told AFP, referring to France's puppet regime under the Nazis. Bauer's descendants will attempt to show that legal precedence is on their side.

They have noted that since 1945 French courts have routinely annulled the sales of other works that were part of Bauer's collection and ordered they be returned to his family. They are pinning their hopes on the application of an April 1945 law which renders void transactions of looted works. The Tolls will attempt to show that the 1945 law does not apply in this case and contest the competence of the court to decide the matter.

If the court does not have jurisdiction in the affair it will have to "free the painting", Soffer said. He added that the outcome would potentially be of "great importance" in the art world as it highlighted "a risk of legal insecurity regarding works which are lent to exhibitions in France.". The Bauers' lawyer Cedric Fischer would not comment on the case ahead of the hearing.

© Agence France-Presse
http://artdaily.com/news/99399/Nazi-looted-Pissarro-painting-at-centre-of-legal-tussle#.Wd0C4FtSyUk

Renoir stolen in brazen theft ahead of Paris auction

A painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, "Portrait of a Young Girl with Blond Hair", was stolen Saturday from an auction house in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, near Paris. Photo: PAUL J. RICHARDS. AFP.

NANTERRE (AFP).- A small painting by French impressionist Auguste Renoir was stolen from an auctioneer in a Paris suburb on Saturday, the day before it was due to be sold, police said. "Portrait d'une jeune fille blonde" (Portrait of a Young Girl with Blond Hair), estimated at 25,000-30,000 euros ($30,000-$35,000), was taken from an auction house in the western suburb of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where it was on display prior to the sale.

The thief apparently just took the oil painting off the wall and escaped unnoticed, a police official said. The highlight of the sale, the canvas is listed in the auctioneers' catalogue as measuring 14 centimetres by 12.2 centimetres (5.5 inches by 4.5 inches), with the initials "A.R." in its top left-hand corner. Police hope video surveillance footage will provide a lead.

© Agence France-Presse
http://artdaily.com/news/99194/Renoir-stolen-in-brazen-theft-ahead-of-Paris-auction#.WdKOPVtSyUk