Malevich paintings believed stolen from collector are seized in Paris

French bailiffs have seized more than 100 works by avant-garde artists from a Paris storage facility. Among them are paintings by Kazimir Malevich. The bailiffs suspect that the works were stolen from a private collector.

Frankfurt-based law firm Dentons says the works belong to its client Usman Khatib, a businessman and investor of Palestinian origin, The Art Newspaper has reported. The collection is valued at over EUR100 million (US£108 million). Khatib said it was stolen from a rented storage facility in Wiesbaden, Germany, in December 2019.

Among the works seized are paintings by Russian artists Wassily Kandinsky and Natalia Goncharova, as well as Ukrainian artist Kazimir Malevich, whom The Art Newspaper referred to as a Russian avant-garde artist.

This is not the first discovery of works from Khatib's stolen collection. Last year, bailiffs seized paintings that the collector also claimed he owned from a storage facility in Frankfurt. In total, Khatib claims to have lost about 900 works of art worldwide.

His son, Castro Ben Leon Lawrence Jayyusi, who is searching for the missing collection, says some of the works were sold at auctions in Israel, France and Monaco last year. In 2015, Khatib purchased 871 works from Israeli art dealer Itzhak Zarug, who ran a gallery in Wiesbaden. However, after the purchase, the local prosecutor's office confiscated the works because they were believed to be forgeries.

In 2019, the authorities returned Zarug's collection, which included some of the paintings Khatib had purchased. A short time later, the artworks disappeared from Khatib's storage facility in Wiesbaden. Khatib's son says he knows the identity of the thief and has tried to negotiate the return of the collection, but to no avail.

Moreover, the works have begun to appear at auctions. So the family have commenced legal action. "We will follow the perpetrators around the world. We will continue to recover our property," Jayyusi said.

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