A decades-old dispute over one of Europe’s most celebrated private art collections has taken a new turn, with court filings in New York seeking access to records held by Sotheby’s that could shed light on the ownership history of masterpieces by Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet and other renowned artists.
The request, filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, was made on behalf of a Swiss court that is overseeing a high-stakes inheritance case involving the collection assembled by the late Greek shipping magnate Vassilis Goulandris and his wife, Elisa.
The filing asks the American court to appoint a commissioner authorized to obtain documents and other evidence from Sotheby’s for use in proceedings before the Cantonal Court of Lausanne, Switzerland. The move marks the latest effort by Aspasia Zaimi, a relative and heir of the Goulandris family, to trace the provenance and ownership of artworks that have been the subject of years of legal wrangling.
The collection at the center of the dispute is regarded as one of the most important private holdings of modern art assembled in the 20th century. Over the decades, the Goulandrises acquired works by some of the most influential artists in Western art, including Picasso, Edgar Degas, Van Gogh, Monet and Paul Cézanne.
Ms. Zaimi contends that a substantial portion of the collection forms part of her inheritance and has challenged transactions involving dozens of artworks. Her claims focus in part on the ownership status of 83 works that were reportedly sold in 1985 by Mr. Goulandris to Wilton Trading S.A., a Panama-registered company owned by his sister, Donta Voridis Goulandris.
According to court filings and publicly available documents, however, evidence connected to museum loans and later sales suggests that the artworks may have remained under the control of Vassilis and Elisa Goulandris long after the reported transfer. Lawyers for Ms. Zaimi argue that such evidence could prove significant in determining whether the transactions reflected genuine changes in ownership or were merely administrative arrangements.
The dispute acquired an additional international dimension following the publication of the Panama Papers in 2016. Documents from the leaked archive indicated that four special-purpose companies were established in 2004 by the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca to facilitate sales of artworks held under the umbrella of Wilton Trading.
Among the works identified in the documents were paintings by Pierre Bonnard and Marc Chagall that later appeared at auction with provenance descriptions referring only to a “private European collection,” despite links to the Goulandris collection. Those revelations raised new questions about the movement of artworks and the corporate structures used in their ownership and sale.
The latest filing in New York does not ask the American court to rule on who owns the artworks. Instead, it forms part of a legal mechanism commonly used in cross-border litigation, allowing foreign courts to seek assistance in obtaining evidence located in the United States.
If the request is approved, Sotheby’s could be compelled to produce transaction records, correspondence, internal files and other materials that may help reconstruct the history of specific artworks and clarify how ownership was represented in past sales.
Any evidence obtained would be transmitted to the Swiss court and not evaluated by the U.S. judge overseeing the assistance request. The underlying lawsuit in Lausanne pits Ms. Zaimi against Kyriakos Koutsomallis and the Vassilis and Elisa Goulandris Foundation, which today oversees the legacy of one of the most influential art collections ever assembled by a Greek family.
