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 Swiss prosecutors said they had ordered the seizure of the
collection pending a decision by a French court after the
Paris-based Alberto and Annette Giacometti Foundation alleged
that the works had been stolen decades ago.
The Swiss-born Giacometti, who died in 1966, is one of the
best-known sculptors of the 20th century. His "Pointing Man"
sold last year at Christie's for $141 million, the largest sum
ever for a sculpture.
But the legal tussle over a relatively obscure collection of
drawings and photos has played out quietly, in lawyers' offices
and hushed museum corridors in what Swiss courts call a
"prosecution against unknown persons" by French authorities.
The Foundation in Paris, home to some 5,000 Giacometti works,
the world's largest collection, has not said whom it accuses of
theft. Sabine Longin, director of development at the foundation,
told Reuters it would speak publicly of the issue only after the
ownership battle had been resolved.
"They have asked us to confiscate the drawings and photographs,
which we have done," said Claudio Riedi of the local
prosecutors' office in the Swiss town of Chur where the museum
holding the drawings and photos is located.
"Whether there is a separate request for them to be returned is
up to the French court."
The collection includes 16 Giacometti sketches and 101
photographs of him by famous photographers including Man Ray,
Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Doisneau covering a period from
the 1920s to the 1960s.
Though Swiss court documents are heavily redacted -- in no place
is Giacometti ever named -- Reuters was able to reconstruct the
case by speaking with people familiar with its details.
"GREAT ART LOVER"
The collection was in Giacometti's possession when he died in
Chur in 1966, but may have changed hands among family members
before finding its way to an unidentified "great art lover" in
Switzerland around 1998, according to the Swiss court documents.
After learning of the collection in 2009, the Grisons Art Museum
in Chur enlisted Remo Stoffel, a local real estate tycoon and
patron, to buy it for more than $1 million.
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Stoffel then loaned it to the facility for 15 years.
With the collection's first public exhibition in 2011, however, the
foundation in Paris lodged a complaint alleging the works had been
"fraudulently stolen," Swiss documents indicate.
Since the Swiss police intervened in February 2014, the works have
been kept in storage at the museum. A Swiss appeals court two months
ago rejected a bid to at least allow the collection to be exhibited,
pending a court ruling.
On Monday Stoffel confirmed his role as a benefactor to the museum,
but declined direct comment on the case.
Museum director Stephan Kunz and his predecessor, Beat Stutzer, who
organised the original deal with Stoffel that brought the collection
to Chur, also declined comment, citing the legal proceedings.
Art historians say the collection provides an intimate glimpse into
the life of Giacometti and his contemporaries.
In one 1946 photo, for instance, Bresson captures Giacometti and his
wife descending a staircase to his Parisian studio. Another shows
him sculpting in the Swiss village of Stampa in 1964, two years
before his death from heart and lung disease.
And in a sketch dashed off almost casually on a magazine page,
Giacometti offers his rendition of a Picasso nude on the facing page
-- art imitating art.
"It offers a very important documentation of the artist and his
private side," said Katharina Ammann, a Swiss art expert who helped
produce a catalog of the works that accompanied the 2011 exhibition.
"It is also the perfect accompaniment for the few Giacometti works
already part of the Grisons museum's collection."
(Reporting by John Miller; Editing by Gareth Jones)
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