An art preservation group filed a lawsuit against the landlord of the Four Seasons Restaurant in an attempt to stop the removal of a large tapestry painted by Picasso that hangs in the hallway.
"Le Tricorne," the largest Picasso painting in the U.S., has hung inside the iconic New York City restaurant since 1959. The building claims the painting needs to be moved in order to repair the wall behind it, the Associated Press reported. But the nonprofit Landmarks Conservancy claims moving the 19-by-20 foot curtain could damage the famed artwork.
"We're just trying to do our duty and trying to keep a lovely interior landmark intact," Peg Breen, president of Landmarks Conservancy, which has owned the painting since 2005, told the AP.
Picasso completed the tapestry, a depiction of a bullfight, in 1919 for a ballet titled "Le Tricorne," or "three-cornered hat." Though it is not one of his most praised artworks, "it was always considered one of the major pieces of Picasso's theatrical décor," Sir John Richardson, a Picasso biographer, told the AP.
RFR Holding Corp., the owner of the Park Avenue building that houses the restaurant, said structural engineers concluded that the limestone wall behind the curtain could collapse and is in need of repair, The New York Times reported in February.
"The case is not about Picasso," Andrew Kratenstein, the landlord's attorney, wrote in court documents obtained by the AP.
Landmarks Conservancy is convinced this would mean the painting's end.
"One of RFR's own movers told us that no matter how cautious they are, the work is so brittle and fragile that it could, as one of them put it, 'crack like a potato chip,' " Breen told The NY Times.
Aby Rosen, co-founder of RFR and Chairman of the state Council on the Arts, told the NY Times he plans on having the painting restored if it is removed. The Museum of Modern Art said it would then take the painting and place it in storage.
"But then the question is when anyone would ever see it again," Breen told the NY Times, "if it survived the move."
