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Maine Antique Digest
Suit Filed Over Picasso Drawing
by Daniel Grant
A Manhattan art dealer who paid $145,000 for a drawing by Pablo Picasso that was reportedly deemed a fake by a surviving daughter of the artist filed a $5 million lawsuit in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York, on January 23 against two other art dealers, one of whom has been tied to the sale of fake artwork in the past.
Chantal Park, an Upper East Side New York City art dealer whose business is called Art History, Inc., claimed that in July 2005 she turned over $145,000 to Charles Locke of Duluth, Georgia, and Biagio "Luigi" Cugini of Maynard, Massachusetts, for the drawing Personnage Endormi et Femme Accroupie. Court papers claim the money was to be held in escrow until a client of Park accepted the work, based on what Park claimed was a verbal agreement.
According to Park’s New York City lawyer, Malcolm S. Taub, this client was sent a condition report on the drawing, and all three dealers "assumed that the deal would go through." The client, however, found that the work "was not in the condition as reported," and it "was rejected."
Park asked for the return of the money, which Cugini was willing to do in part—he offered $65,000 of the $110,000 that was his share of the sale—but Locke refused, for reasons that are not fully clear, Taub stated. Hoping to right the matter by simply selling the artwork, Park sought another potential buyer. First, though, she sent the drawing for authentication to Maya Picasso, the artist’s daughter by Marie-Therese Walter. According to court papers, Maya Picasso declared the work to be a fake.
This led Park to renew her request for the return of the full $145,000, which she claims both Locke and Cugini refused to do.
Taub noted that Park had been introduced to Locke and Cugini through another Manhattan art dealer. "That I wish the verbal agreement about the money being placed in escrow should have been in writing is the understatement of the century," Taub said, "but the case boils down to the fact that this isn’t a legitimate Picasso."
The lawsuit asks for punitive damages in addition to the $145,000 because, Taub stated, "it appears as if this is not an accident. When people engage in conduct that is wanton, the court can impose punitive damages to dissuade other parties as well as the particular defendants from engaging in that type of conduct." He noted that information in the lawsuit has been "referred to the FBI, and they said they will interview" the defendants. Neither Locke nor Cugini was available for comment.
In August 2005, Locke filed for bankruptcy in Georgia.
Cugini has been investigated for trafficking in fake artwork in the past. Cugini and Dr. Vilas Likhite, who was arrested in December 2004 in California for allegedly selling fake art, were codefendants in a federal case in the mid-1980’s involving $600,000 in fake art sold to wealthy art collectors in New York. In the 1985 case, Cugini and Likhite were charged in U.S. District Court in New York with art forgery and fraud involving artists such as Hans Hofmann, Jackson Pollock, and Willem de Kooning. The case, however, was dropped.
(Source: http://www.maineantiquedigest.com/articles/mar06/picasso0306.htm)