Malevich’s paintings were seized in Paris

The work of Natalia Goncharova

French bailiffs seized from the Paris repository of over 100 works by avant-garde artists. Among them are paintings by Kazimir Malevich. They suspect that the works were stolen from a private collector.

Dentons, a law firm from Frankfurt, claims that these works belong to its client, a businessman and investor of Palestinian origin, Usman Khatib, writes The Art Newspaper.

Collectionsi estimated at more than 100 million euros ($1.08 million). Khatib claims she was stolen in December 2019 from a storage facility he rented in Wiesbaden, Germany.

Among the seized works are the works of Russian artists Wassily Kandinsky and Natalia Goncharovaas well as a Ukrainian artist Kazimir Malevich. However, the publication also calls Malevich a Russian avant-garde artist.

This is not the first discovery of works from Khatib’s stolen collection. Last year, bailiffs seized the paintings, which the collector also claimed to be his own, from a storage facility in Frankfurt.

In total, Khatib claims to have lost about 900 works of art around the world. Some of the works were sold at auctions in Israel, France and Monaco last year, according to Castro’s son, Ben Leon Lawrence Jayusi, who is looking for the missing collection.

In 2015, Khatib purchased 871 works from the Israeli art dealer Yitzhak Zarug, who ran a gallery in Wiesbaden. However, after the agreement, the local prosecutor’s office confiscated the works because they considered them to be fakes. In 2019, authorities returned the collection to Zaruga, which also included some of the paintings Khatib had purchased. And after some time, the works of art disappeared from Khatib’s storage in Wiesbaden.

Khatib’s son claims to know the thief and tried to negotiate the return of the collection, but to no avail. Moreover, works began to appear at auctions. So the family went to court. “We will pursue criminals worldwide. We will continue to return our property“, – Jayusi said.