Pablo Picasso’s granddaughter, Maya Widmaier Picasso, has weighed in on a dispute over the spectacular Bust of a Woman, a sculpture of her mother, Marie-Thérèse Walter.



In a statement, Widmaier Picasso, 80, dismissed allegations that she sold the same work twice, saying the dealer Larry Gagosian had “paid in good faith the proper price” for the 1931 plaster bust.

Gagosian sold the piece to New York financier Leon Black for around $106m, a record price for any Picasso sculpture.

That sale is disputed by agents for Sheikh Jassim bin Abdulaziz al-Thani of the Qatari royal family, who is married to Sheikha al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, chairwoman of the Qatar Museums Authority.

Pelham Holdings, an art advisory company, claims that in 2014 it reached an agreement with Widmaier Picasso to buy the piece in 2014 for $42m – a record price at the time – and had made two of three payments when Widmaier Picasso backed out of the deal.

Pelham Holdings had sought to seize the sculpture in France but only discovered its whereabouts when its lawyers saw it in on display at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (Moma), in an exhibition that closes on Sunday.

Picasso’s Bust of a Woman is at the center of the sales dispute. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

In court papers filed in Manhattan, Pelham Holdings claims the alleged switch constituted “a flagrant breach of contract”. Courts in Switzerland and France are also involved.

The case is the most public of a series of disputes over Picasso’s work involving his large and complex family of wives, muses, children and grandchildren.

Pelham Holdings blames the situation on an alleged dispute between Widmaier Picasso’s two children. Her son, Olivier, reportedly favours the Qatari deal, while daughter Diana, who periodically works for Gagosian and is engaged in cataloguing her grandfather’s less well-known sculptural output, numbering some 2,000 pieces, reportedly favours the dealer.

Battles over the provenance and ownership of art are increasingly reaching the courts. The dispute, Pelham Holdings claims, illustrates the “stubbornly elusive nature of an increasingly competitive art market, in which deals are made behind closed doors and ownership can be ambiguous”.

In her statement, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, Widmaier Picasso said her daughter reminded her she would get a higher price from the dealer. Her daughter, she said, “cannot be faulted for reminding her mother of the sculpture’s true value”.

Art world watchers are divided over whether the sale represents a breach of contract or the taking of a better offer. Last week, the parties in the dispute agreed that when the Moma show closes, the sculpture will be held by Gagosian until the conflict is adjudicated.