Judge rules Picasso can be auctioned despite claims of Nazi sale

A JUDGE yesterday ruled that a Picasso painting can be sold at auction, despite a claim that its former owner was forced to sell it to the Nazis.

US District Judge Jed Rakoff issued the order four days after Julius H Schoeps, an heir to Berlin banker Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, filed a lawsuit in Manhattan to stop the sale.

The judge had temporarily blocked the auction of Portrait de Angel Fernandez de Soto, which is expected to fetch up to £30 million (€44.7m), saying he needed to decide whether the Nazis forced its former owner to sell it in the 1930s because his family descended from Jews.