Runaway Art Heiress Angela Gulbenkian, Accused of Scamming a Collector Out of a $1.4 Million Yayoi Kusama Pumpkin, Has Been Arrested in Lisbon

Angela Gulbenkian, who married into one of Europe’s most
prominent art families and allegedly leveraged their name to
conduct fraudulent art deals, has been arrested in Portugal.

The jet-setting art heiress is facing two charges of theft in
the UK, including one in connection with the £1.1 million ($1.4
million) sale of a Yayoi Kusama pumpkin sculpture in
2017. The purchaser, Hong Kong-based art advisor Mathieu Ticolat,
says he paid in full but never received the work.

Gulbenkian’s trial, which was set to begin in the UK in
February, hit a snag when she failed to appear on her scheduled
court date, leading London’s Metropolitan Police to issue a
European Arrest
Warrant in February.

Authorities tracked the 38 year old down in Lisbon on Tuesday,
and she is being held “in preventive detention” until she can be
extradited to the UK, a Portuguese prosecutor told Bloomberg.

“We are surprised it has taken so long,” Christopher Marinello
of Art Recovery International, who is
representing Ticolat, told Artnet News.

Marinello has filed a civil lawsuit in Germany
against Siglinde Ischwang, Gulbenkian’s mother, with whom
he believes Gulbenkian had been staying. He alleges that the
art dealer gave her mother £221,000 shortly after Ticolat paid
for the Kusama artwork.

Gulbenkian previously settled a civil case with Ticolat, but
allegedly never made the agreed-upon payment. A previous warrant issued
for her arrest last June was vacated after she told the
judge she had missed an earlier court date due to elective
surgery.

An anonymous London dealer filed a separate
lawsuit against Gulbenkian in Germany in January, alleging
that she fraudulently sold him an Andy Warhol print
for £115,000 ($151,000) in March 2019.

Gulbenkian, who was born Angela Ischwang, changed her name
when she married Duarte Gulbenkian, the great-grandnephew of
British-Armenian art collector and oil baron Calouste
Gulbenkian.

In conducting her art deals, she used a Gulbenkian Foundation
email address, giving her credibility as an art advisor, though she
was never formally affiliated with the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum nor
the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

The post Runaway Art Heiress Angela Gulbenkian, Accused of
Scamming a Collector Out of a $1.4 Million Yayoi Kusama Pumpkin,
Has Been Arrested in Lisbon appeared first on artnet
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