100 Paintings Seized by French Authorities and the FBI from Puerto Rican Art Foundation

It is a bright, sunny day in the streets of old San Juan in mid-April—birds are chirping, the ocean breeze is slipping through the streets and rustling the leaves of the trees, and locals are leisurely making their way down the sidewalks and past the iconic colorful buildings. But on one corner of calle San Sebastian, men in navy blue t-shirts with yellow “FBI” letters are carrying out thin, white, rectangular boxes and loading them into the back of an otherwise empty white truck. The electronic beep beep of the mechanized loading ramp cuts through the otherwise peaceful setting of this Caribbean city. As onlookers look upon and film the relatively calm scene—which is missing the fanfare of typical American police and FBI raids—another set of agents walk through the golden doors of 263 calle San Sebastian with their prize in hand: Victor Vasarely’s Op Art Movement paintings.

This beautiful teal building at 263 calle San Sebastian is the home of the Michèle Vasarely Foundation, founded by Michèle Taburno-Vasarely, the second wife of Vasarely’s son, who is known by his chosen artist name: Yvaral. According to their website, the foundation has the goal of preserving Vasarely’s works, “interconnecting [them] with the true cultural milieu and…achieving, beyond its notoriety, the recognition it undoubtedly deserves,” something that it believes the original Foundation in Aix-en-Provence has failed to do. The website also highlights the Foundation’s work in Asia, Latin America, and the United States, with a curious absence of any mention of Europe or the French headquarters of Vasarely’s original Foundation.

Perhaps Taburno-Vasarely’s involvement in a bitter, lengthy legal scandal with Pierre Vasarely—Yvaral’s son from his first marriage and the current head of the French Foundation—about the rightful ownership of the artist’s artworks and legacy is the reason for her jabs at the French Foundation on her foundation’s website. She claims that the rightful ownership of the Vasarely works is rightfully hers, while Pierre contests her arguments based on a French judge’s ruling in 2013. This FBI raid in San Juan, which, according to Puerto Rico’s largest newspaper El Nuevo Dia, was ordered by the District Court of Paris, is just another chapter of this dramatic legal battle.

It seems that this “Vasarely Affair” formally began in 2008 (while 2008 is the year it first made international headlines, some believe it all started in 1997 when the French Foundation was involved in an enormous embezzlement scheme). Taburno-Vasarely was arrested in June 2008 after she allegedly tried to break into an art dealer’s storage unit in Chicago and take two Vasarely paintings that she believed were rightfully hers—a claim that, according to the Art Newspaper, she vehemently declines. In a statement to Hypoallergenic, she bemoaned that the storage room was actually hers and that “an American gallery owner cut the lock on my storeroom, emptied it completely, and changed the lock which I was obliged to break, in order to regain access to my storeroom.” Continuing her claim on Vasarely’s works, she also stated that “the US justice system declared me to be 100% in the right and returned everything to me,” even though a spokesperson for the Vasarely Foundation in Aix-en-Provence had already disputed this statement to the Art Newspaper.

After her 2008 arrest, Taburno-Vasarely disappeared from headlines until 2012, when  a French Court granted Pierre Vasarely the rights to Victor’s artworks, whileTaburno-Vasarely ended up moving to Puerto Rico. This is where things get interesting: Pierre claimed that about 600 Vasarely paintings were immediately—and illegally—shipped from France to the United States and arrived in Puerto Rico in late 2012. In 2013, a French Court ordered Taburno-Vasarely to return 200 paintings in her Puerto Rican collection back to France, yet she completely ignored that order. Taburno-Vasarely has also been involved in other, separate legal scuffles of her own, including one against Luis Rojas-Buscaglia, her former business partner, who sued her in hopes of coming to an agreement about a commission for selling some of Vasarely’s works.

More recently, in October 2022, Pierre accused the commercial gallery Mazzoleni of selling works of art that legally belong to the French Foundation. The gallery fired back by noting that they were selling works consigned by Taburno-Vasarely, which inflamed this “Vasarely Affair” once again. In a statement to The Art Newspaper, a spokesperson for Mazzoleni said that “the exhibition features works from various consignors, including Michèle Catherine Taburno [Vasarely]. We are saddened by the succession dispute between Pierre Vasarely and his family which has regretfully been going on for decades to the detriment of Victor Vasarely’s reputation.”

The intricacies and complexities of this decades-long legal battle has been the subject of many studies and papers by various experts in art law and droit moral, which protects the personal and reputational value of a creator’s work, instead of focusing on its exclusively monetary value. In a February 2010 issue of L’Objet d’art Magazine, M. François Duret-Robert, a specialist in art-world jurisprudence and droit moral, wrote a work on the so-called “Vasarely Affair.” He deemed that this “Affair” concerns “the droit moral for the Victor Vasarely works” and was the product of two contradictory wills. In his November 28th, 1990 will, Vasarely wrote “my son Jean-Pierre, artist who has complete knowledge of my works to be the unique legatee of the moral right related to my work.” The artist’s second will on July 29th, 1991 confirms the facts of the first, while a third will, dated April 11th, 1993, made a huge change: “I give Pierre Vasarely, my only grandson, the disposable part.  He is the only one with the capacity to ensure continuation of my work at the Vasarely Foundation, which bears my name.”

Mr. Duret-Robert highlights that there were concerns of whether or not the artist was of sound mind when he drafted and changed the third version of his will, as Dr. Patrick Fremont, the psychiatrist caring for the artist in 1994, noted that Vasarely suffered from “an intellectual deterioration which not only affected his memory, but did not afford him the mental capacity to make any decisions.” Nevertheless, in June 1999, another psychiatrist, Dr. François Régis Cousin, testified that “there was no reason to doubt the artists’ mental capacity on April 11th, 1993,” a testimony that the French court agreed with. On March 24th, 2005, the Paris Court made their decision: “although Victor Vasarely suffered some weakening of the spirit as a result of his advanced age and mental disease, there is no evidence to prove a state of insanity on April of 1993, nor any reason to annul the will written on that date.” From a legal standpoint, therefore, according to M. Duret-Robert, we are unable to contest the validity of Vasarely’s wills.

So who, according to the law, holds the “moral right” and is the rightful heir to and owner of Vasarely’s paintings? Well, according to Vasarely’s wills, it seems that the correct answer is Pierre. After Yvaral’s death in 2002, Taburno-Vasarely invoked his will, which states, “I give my wife the moral rights to my work and to my father, Victor Vasarely’s work, which he willed unto me.” Under French law, if one were to change, revoke, or write a new will, that new will automatically nullifies the existing will. Based on this law, the Aix-en-Provence court accepted Vasarely’s final will (the one on April 11th, 1993) and deemed Pierre as the titleholder for the moral rights to Vasarely’s works. M. Duret-Robert also probed the French court’s order concerning the archives—though Vasarely gave Taburno-Vasarely the archives in August 1991, French Courts transferred Vasarely’s archives to Pierre. However, regardless of who “hold[s] the title to the moral rights,” it truly comes down to which Vasarely, Michèle or Pierre, is the most knowledgeable in the late artist’s works. Only then will one be crowned “specialist” and the victor in this brutal affair.

Clearly, in order to retain her rights under Vasarely’s will and defend herself against the “plot orchestrated by her husband’s son, in collaboration with political and judicial figures in her native France,” Taburno-Vasarely continues to do what she sees fit in order to keep “her” paintings. In a statement to The Art Newspaper last year, she mentions that “I have so many documents proving my ownership. The federal court decision was that during four years of inquiry, Pierre Vasarely, who was accusing me, did not bring any proof that could sustain his allegations. All the paintings were returned to me.” When questioned about her recent legal battles she further stated that she has “no personal interest in any scandal” and instead focused on her commitment to Victor and Yvaral’s works: “My duty is to protect [the works] the artist gave to me, to protect the name I am wearing in their memory.…It is extremely sad to have to accept that the foundation in Aix created by the artist has merely become a space for politics and scandal. We are not in art anymore; we are in a disaster.”

Pierre, on the other hand, has a short (if not sweet) reply for his step-mother: “What I wish is for my stepmother to execute the judiciary ruling….It is not me; it’s not anyone else; it’s the French justice system, who are asking a French person who lives abroad to return expert works to France. It’s simply following a judicial order.”

While the motivations behind the San Juan raid are unclear, it seems that the general public will not be privy to new information anytime soon. When questioned by El Nuevo Dia as to why this raid took place and who ordered it, the FBI spokeswoman in Puerto Rico, Limary Cruz Rubio, replied that the FBI was in San Juan to support “the efforts of French agencies, as part of a memorandum of understanding between the US government and France.” With the amount of legal back-and-forth between both parties, there is sure to be some juicy information that will be revealed in the future. Stay tuned for more updates.

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