It was on display at the Sompo art museum in Tokyo for 35 years, but has recently been the subject of a legal battle centering on an earlier sale in Germany, before World War II.
The family of the painting’s former owner, Jewish banker Paul von Mendelsohn Bartholdy, filed a lawsuit in Illinois last month demanding the return of the painting and hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.
They claim that Sompo’s predecessor, Yasuda Fire & Marine Insurance, acquired the painting “recklessly ignoring its provenance, including the forced sale of the painting by Mendelssohn Bartholdy in Nazi Germany in 1934.”
“Sompo Holdings has misused the chart to reap billions of dollars of unjust enrichment through a sophisticated branding strategy” the lawsuit said.
“Defendants have commercially exploited as a corporate emblem what they have long known to be a Nazi-tainted work of art,” it added.
However, Sompo Holdings defended ownership of the painting in a statement sent to AFP on Tuesday, saying it “categorically rejects the criminal charges made in the lawsuit.”
The company “intends to vigorously defend its property rights over ‘Girasoles,'” Sompo added.
It is not the only work of art that the heirs want to recover.
They filed similar lawsuits elsewhere, and in 2020, the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC returned a Picasso drawing to the family.