Ovitz Sues Perry Rubenstein Gallery
Prominent art collector, Michael Ovitz, who had a short stint as president of the Walt Disney Co. in the mid-1990s, claimed in the Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit filed Tuesday that the Perry Rubenstein Gallery improperly sold two of his works by contemporary American painter and photographer Richard Prince.
Ovitz alleges that the gallery represented to him that it sold the 2006 Prince work “Untitled (de Kooning)” in May but withheld proceeds of the supposed sale; and sold Prince’s 1992 work “Nobody’s Home” for less than an agreed upon amount and has not given the collector the proceeds from the deal.
Suing for fraud and breach of contract, Ovitz is seeking the return of the artwork, along with unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.