Nahmad Seeks to Reopen Modigliani Restitution Case With New Witnesses

David Nahmad’s lawyers are asking a New York court to revisit its recent decision in the long-running dispute over Amedeo Modigliani’s Seated Man with a Cane (1918), citing what they say is new eyewitness testimony that could reopen the case.

In a motion filed after the court’s April 3 decision, which awarded the painting to the estate of dealer Oscar Stettiner, Nahmad’s legal team argues that the work at the center of the claim may have been misidentified from the start. The suit was brought by Stettiner’s grandson, Philippe Maestracci, who has been trying to recover the painting for more than a decade alongside the restitution firm Mondex. The work, estimated to be worth more than $25 million, was bought at auction by a Nahmad-linked company in 1996 and has been kept in Switzerland since. 

At the center of the new filing are two witnesses who say they remember a different Modigliani once held by the Van der Klip family in Paris. According to Nahmad’s lawyers, that family came into possession of the painting during World War II and kept it hidden for years. The witnesses say the work they saw was smaller, darker, and didn’t show a seated man or a cane—raising the possibility, the lawyers argue, that the wrong painting has been the focus of the case all along.

That account comes in part from a newly submitted affirmation by Frédéric Allain, a longtime acquaintance of the Van der Klip family who recalled being shown a hidden Modigliani in their apartment that looked nothing like Seated Man with a Cane. He described a work about 55 to 60 centimeters tall, showing only part of a man’s torso and no cane, and said he came forward only after reading coverage of the court’s decision. 

Nahmad’s lawyers say this backs up their longstanding argument that Mondex, which is representing Stettiner’s heirs, identified the wrong painting. They also point to a 1946 report describing the missing work as a self-portrait—something Seated Man with a Cane is not—and to a new catalogue raisonné by scholar Marc Restellini, which they say finds no link between the painting and Stettiner.

Mondex pushed back sharply. “We look to Mr. Nahmad to stop using his millions to delay justice and to honorably return the painting as he promised,” said James Palmer, an international consultant with the firm. He added that even if another Modigliani had been in the Van der Klip home, there is no evidence connecting it to the work looted from Stettiner. According to Mondex, Seated Man with a Cane was in the family’s possession from 1944 until 1996 and bears Stettiner’s name.

The filing comes just weeks after Judge Joel M. Cohen ruled that the painting had been looted during World War II and should be returned to Stettiner’s estate, rejecting the Nahmad family’s arguments about gaps in its ownership history and finding a clear line from Stettiner to its wartime seizure. 

Nahmad’s legal team has also filed a notice of appeal.