Word: thyssen
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...Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum is made up of about 800 works that the government of Spain bought outright from Thyssen in 1992, and another several hundred acquired from Tita's 1,000-piece collection, which she in turn compiled with her late husband's largesse. Her part was loaned to the Spanish government in an agreement that expires in 2011. Borja says that two years ago he learned that he was co-heir of that collection, and notes that he has not as yet co-signed any agreement with the museum. It is this inheritance, which includes important works by Monet...
...latest round in the familial slugfest began when 29-year-old Borja, who was adopted by Heinrich Thyssen when the Dutch-born Swiss industrialist married Borja's mother, showed up with a notary at the Madrid museum in early November and filed notice that he was reclaiming two paintings. Borja said that the two works - Goya's Women with Two Children in Fountain and Italian Baroque painter Corrado Giaquinto's Baptism of Christ, believed to be worth 7 million euros, were promised him as gifts by his father...
Whatever her financial motivations may be, some observers attribute a motive more primal than economic to Tita's legal wranglings. "This is all about Borja trying to seek independence from his mother, and Tita not wanting to give it," says David Litchfield, British author of The Thyssen Art Macabre. "He was always her little prince, but ever since he married Blanca, Tita has been fighting to keep him at her side...
...Controversy and intrafamily feuds are part of the Thyssen dynasty fabric. The Baroness had Borja out of wedlock with a previous paramour but convinced her rich husband, who was 22 years her senior, to adopt Borja and to give him the Thyssen surname. She and Thyssen also adopted two girls. In March 2002, Thyssen, who died later that year, settled an expensive lawsuit with his eldest son over the disposition of the family's $2 billion trust...
...spokesman for the Thyssen Museum said it has no comment on the situation. But with the renegotiation of part of its collection less than two years off, its curators must surely be wringing their hands about Borja's latest statement, issued on Dec. 3. Now that his mother had sued him, Borja's lawyers wrote, the scion no longer finds any "moral impediment" to prevent him from doing the same. In which case one of the greatest collections of European art in the world could soon find itself on the auction block...