The $3 Billion Family Art Feud
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The $3 Billion Family Art Feud Greek shipping mogul Basil Goulandris and his wife, Elise, aren’t household names, but the 16-year family feud over their art collection could become the stuff of art-world legend By Kelly Crow For half a century starting in the 1950s, Greek shipping mogul Basil Goulandris and his wife, Elise, lived in a manner worthy of a sun-soaked, Patricia Highsmith novel. They palled around with European aristocracy and flitted among their seven homes in places like Paris, New York’s Southampton and Switzerland’s Gstaad—when they weren’t sailing around the world on their yacht, “Paloma.” The couple never had children. Instead, relatives say they devoted their energies to amassing one of the world’s best private art collections, valued at as much as $3 billion by one estimate. The trove of several hundred pieces included 11 Picassos, six van Goghs, five Cezannes and a rare pair of Monet’s 1894 views of the Rouen Cathedral, one bathed in blue hues and the other one in pink. The couple also had a bronze ballerina by Degas, a Pollock and a Balthus. When Balthus’s biographer, Nicholas Fox Weber, visited the couple in Switzerland, he said the paintings rimming their walls “made my knees go wobbly.” The Goulandris collection is now at the center of one of the biggest and most complex legal disputes over art in Europe—including a bombshell revelation in the Panama Papers. The saga involves a collection of treasures that have largely been hidden for the past two decades, a secret seller using an offshore company to put up paintings for auction and a fight that boils down to one nonexistent will and one cryptic one. The chief protagonist in this 16-year family feud is a niece of the Goulandris’s who claims she and her cousins should have inherited much of the couple’s art after their aunt Elise died in 2000. The niece, Aspasia Zaimis, a feisty shipbuilder’s wife who is in her 70s and lives in Athens, says her aunt owned the trove when she died and intended for it to go to her relatives. Another set of cousins on her uncle’s side—and the couple’s namesake foundation—say otherwise. “People who say the collection wasn’t hers anymore are being unfair and degrading to my aunt,” Ms. Zaimis said. “I’m fighting for her.” Left: Aspasia Zaimis photographed at her home in Porto Rafti, Greece, on June 20, 2016 | Right: Basil and Elise Goulandris in their home in Gstaad, Switzerland PHOTO: FROM LEFT: MYRTO PAPADOPOULOS FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL; ZAIMIS FAMILY Her main opponent is one of the couple’s longtime employees, a soft-spoken, snowy-haired historian named Kyriakos Koutsomallis, who manages the art collection of the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation in Athens, which claims a right to some of the disputed art. Mr. Koutsomallis and the foundation are currently transforming a neoclassical mansion in Athens to become a 12-story museum that’s expected to display at least some of the Goulandris collection when it opens early next year. Mr. Koutsomallis, along with relatives on Mr. Goulandris’s side of the family, claim the most valuable pieces of the couple’s art collection—83 works— were quietly sold to an offshore company several years before Mr. Goulandris died and should not be part of any inheritance claims. Twenty nine of those 83 paintings—including some choice works like Vincent van Gogh’s 1889 “Olive Pickers” —have since been redirected back to the foundation, Mr. Koutsomallis has said in court papers, and are therefore not part of the widow’s estate. No one will say where the remaining works are located. To finance her continuing court battles, Ms. Zaimis has made an unusual arrangement with a longtime New York private dealer, Ezra Chowaiki. In exchange for the lucrative rights to sell any paintings should Ms. Zaimis eventually prevail, Mr. Chowaiki said he has helped fund a case in Greece which Ms. Zaimis filed in 2001 and later shifted to Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Arrangements like these are rare outside the realm of Nazi art restitution. Heirs to lost Jewish fortunes often team up with art lawyers who work for a promised share of any eventual art sales—an arrangement depicted in last year’s Helen Mirren film, “Woman in Gold.” Now, art lawyers are following the Goulandris case to see if Mr. Chowaiki’s long bet on the collection, which he estimates is valued at $3 billion, will pay off or flounder. No estate worth more than roughly $500 million has ever come to auction. Thomas C. Danziger, a New York art lawyer who isn’t involved with the case, said, “It’s Agatha Christie meets Homer.” One big reason for the ownership dispute: Mr. Goulandris died in 1994 without a will. After his death at age 81, relatives from his side of the family say they told his widow that in 1985 Mr. Goulandris had sold off the 83 gems of the couple’s collection to a Panamanian company controlled by his side of the family. It was called Wilton Trading. Mr. Goulandris was in debt at the time, the relatives say, and thus he accepted a firesale price of $31.7 million, or roughly $382,000 apiece. Elise Goulandris didn’t initially know about the sale but she allegedly went along with it, relatives said in court documents. Greek Art Odyssey A look at some of the highlights of the roughly $3 billion art collection of the Greek shipping mogul Basil Goulandris, whose art holdings sit at the center of a 16-year family feud. fullscreen 1 of 8 In 1972, Basil and Elise Goulandris bought this Fernand Leger from 1919, 'Mechanical Elements,' and hung it in their home in Gstaad, Switzerland. The painter’s 1990 catalogue raisonné lists them as its owner as recently as 1990—even though Mr. Goulandris’s relatives say he sold it in 1985. When asked about the discrepancy, the director of the Goulandris’s museums in Andros, Greece, told Swiss prosecutors that the misattributions were all clerical errors. © ARS, NY/ADAGP, PARIS The roughly $3 billion art collection of Greek shipping executive Basil and Elise Goulandris is at the center of a 16- year family feud, including Joan Miro’s 1926 'The Grasshopper.' Mr. Goulandris bought this surrealist painting in 1972 and his relatives say he sold it in 1985, a sale his niece Aspasia Zaimis disputes. A 1993 Miro show catalog from New York’s Museum of Modern Art listed the ... Basil and Elise Goulandris often traveled with the gems of their art collection, shuttling them between their apartment in Paris and their chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland, shown here. Hanging on the paneled back wall, from left, are Monet’s 1894 view of Rouen Cathedral, Pierre Bonnard’s 1907 'In the Bathroom' and Joan Miro’s 'The Grasshopper.' ZAIMIS FAMILY Aspasia Zaimis, one of Ms. Goulandris’s four nieces, balked when the executor of her aunt’s estate told her that the bulk of her aunt’s collection had been sold in 1985. Ms. Zaimis said her aunt 'loved those paintings like they were her babies' and wouldn’t have approved of their sale to an offshore company. Ms. Zaimis, shown here, stands in front of Vincent van Gogh’s 1889 'The Olive Pickers' in Ms. Goulandris’s home in Gstaad. ZAIMIS FAMILY The 2002 catalogue raisonné, or official inventory, of the sculptures of Edgar Degas said this bronze cast of 'Little Dancer, Aged 14,' belonged to Basil and Elise Goulandris, even though Mr. Goulandris’s relatives claim he sold it in 1985. Other castings of the same sculpture have sold at auction for as much as $25 million. In 1991, art historian Nicholas Fox Weber visited the Gstaad home of Basil and Elise Goulandris and saw one of their prized pieces, Paul Cezanne’s 1883-84 'Portrait of the Artist Looking Over His Shoulder.' Mr. Weber, who now runs the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, described the 10-inch-wide canvas as 'one of the most magical paintings I’ve ever seen.' In 1996, Dutch scholar J.M. Meulenhoff updated his catalogue raisonné of Vincent van Gogh and included the painter’s 1888 'Still Life with Coffee Pot,' listing its owner as Ms. Goulandris—even though her husband’s relatives say Mr. Goulandris sold it in 1985. It was later exhibited by the Goulandris foundation at its museum in Andros. On June 14, 1957, Basil Goulandris made his international debut as a heavyweight collector at a Paris auction when he outbid Greek collector Stavros Niarchos to win a 1901 Paul Gauguin, 'Still Life with Grapefruit (Still Life with Apples and Fruit),' for $255,000—the most anyone had paid in more than a year for any painting that wasn’t by an Old Master, according to former Phillips auctioneer Simon de Pury in his 2016 memoir, 'Auctioneer.' In 1972, Basil and Elise Goulandris bought this Fernand Leger from 1919, 'Mechanical Elements,' and hung it in their home in Gstaad, Switzerland. The painter’s 1990 catalogue raisonné lists them as its owner as recently as 1990—even though Mr. Goulandris’s relatives say he sold it in 1985. When asked about the discrepancy, the director of the Goulandris’s museums in Andros, Greece, told Swiss prosecutors that the misattributions were all clerical errors. © ARS, NY/ADAGP, PARIS The roughly $3 billion art collection of Greek shipping executive Basil and Elise Goulandris is at the center of a 16-year family feud, including Joan Miro’s 1926 'The Grasshopper.' Mr.