I am a civilised person, even with 50 percent of the blood in my veins being Hungarian

• Pierre Vasarely is the grandson of Victor Vasarely. He is the director of his grandfather's foundation in Aix-en-Provence. His goal is to recover as many works of art which have disappeared over the decades as possible for the foundation.
• He has been going to court over this for years, most persistently against his stepmother. He explained to us why.
• Pierre Vasarely has a long-standing relationship with the Vasarely Museums in Pécs and Budapest, both of which were established with donations from his grandparents. Visiting Pécs has almost become like coming home for him and until recently, he also collaborated a lot with the Budapest museum, only to have an exhibition in Seoul cast a shadow over the relationship a year ago.
• He sued both his father and his uncle. In this interview, he talks about the details relating to this, his heavy feelings about it, as well as his dilemmas and how he had finally put his conscience at ease.
• The outcome of the lawsuit, during the course of which the FBI seized 112 works of art from his stepmother last spring, will be a key event in the Vasarely affair. According to Pierre Vasarely, there is only one possible outcome.
• We reported on the whole case in a detailed article, available here.

You always say that the main objective of the Vasarely Foundation, which you direct, is to return as many works of Vasarely as possible. A layman would likely ask: why?

I know that my answer may not be popular nowadays, but Victor Vasarely and his wife Claire were communists. Throughout their lives their goal was to ensure that everyone had free access to their works of art. This was also the philosophy of the teachers at the Bortnyik Workshop (Műhely) where they both studied (a private school of graphic design founded by Sándor Bortnyik and Farkas Molnár in Budapest, which operated based on the principles of Bauhaus between 1928 and 1938). If one ignores this fundamental fact, one cannot understand their works, their political views or their lives.

Vasarely was very successful in the sixties and seventies, but there were some who criticised him when he decided to restore the dilapidated Gordes Castle. They contrasted his plans with his grand, utopian, left-wing ideas. But he never wanted to live there, he wanted the building for his works. The building of the foundation in Aix-en-Provence, where we are now sitting, was built with his own money, he didn't ask for any subsidies from the state, the city or any companies. He is perhaps the only artist in the world who invested his entire fortune in a non-profit project. It was uncommon at the time for an artist who made his name in France to make a generous donation to his native country on the scale that he did to Pécs in 1976 and then to Budapest in 1987.

Your relationship with Hungary is still very strong, you visit Pécs a lot, although Budapest somewhat less frequently lately.

I have regularly received official invitations to Pécs since 2006. I have a close relationship with the Vasarely Museum, the Leőwey Klára Gymnasium, the local university (I received an honorary doctorate in 2013), the annual meeting of theatres there, as well as my Hungarian friends. I was 24 when I first visited Hungary with my grandparents, and already then I felt that I had to do something with my Hungarian roots, even though I didn't speak Hungarian, although I did spend a few months learning the – rather difficult – language. I actually don't like pálinka, and I have to summon up all my strength to down it for the sake of my friends, but I love the wines from Villány and of course from Tokaj. I don't have the same problems with sausages and spicy food as I do with pálinka.

I also had complete confidence towards the Vasarely Museum in Budapest, we had a lot of very important collaborations and exchanges, I believe I started working with the new director – who is also noted as a Vasarely scholar – in 2015. As with his predecessors, everything was brilliant with him too. My confidence began to waver when it was brought to my attention that a donation would be coming to the museum through a Hungarian intermediary from a man who used to work with my grandfather. I found out that this man did not have a very good reputation in Hungary and that he had committed forgery in the past. I informed Márton Orosz, the director of the museum about this and asked him to be careful with these donations, as the museum's original collection was already fantastic. There was another dubious donor, which I also informed him about. Then, about a year and a half ago, I learned that Márton Orosz had become a board member of the Michèle Vasarely Foundation in Puerto Rico.

Do you find it unacceptable for a Vasarely expert to work with both you and Michèle Taburno-Vasarely? Your arguments and those of your stepmother even agree on one point: you both claim to be acting in the artist's best interest.

One cannot work in the interest of the artist while being in possession of works of art stolen from a French foundation and museum! Madame Taburno and Vasarely specialist Arnauld Pierre, for example, offered two works of art for sale during an exhibition at a London gallery in 2022. These pieces had been displayed in Gordes between 1970 and 1996, i.e. they belong to the Vasarely Foundation.

"There are some difficulties in our collaboration with the Vasarely Museum in Budapest, but I think it's important that we continue to move in the same direction together," you told műtárgy.com in May this year. Does this mean you are open to easing tensions with Budapest?

That has always been my intention, as we have had several collaborations in the past and I don't think it's difficult to return to that again. I was not the one who said no to continuing to work together. In any case, I cannot understand how it is possible to cooperate with someone who has appropriated works of historical importance belonging to a French foundation and, moreover, to a state museum. It is possible that, at some point, the director of the Vasarely Museum in Budapest will realise that he made a mistake.

When you say "you were not the one who said no to continuing to work together", are you referring to the exhibition at the Hangaram Art Museum in Korea at the beginning of the year? The exhibition only drew a tenth of the number of visitors it was expected to because you objected to the way the Korean side had allied itself with the Vasarely Museum in Budapest and consequently refused to grant reproduction rights, which in practice means that you did not give your consent to the advertising and merchandising of the exhibition. This meant that far fewer people heard about the exhibition than would have found out about it without the restrictions.

I was approached by a representative of a French organisation working in the cultural sector with connections in Korea at the end of summer 2023. He wanted me, as president of the Vasarely Foundation, to help arrange a major Vasarely retrospective in Seoul. I said that although time was short, the idea was great and feasible because we had contacts with several French and foreign museums, including the two Hungarian ones, and would be able to lend them the pieces of art. A few days later, I received a phone call from the French liaison that the exhibition would after all be organised by the Hungarian Cultural Centre in Seoul, in conjunction with the Vasarely Museum in Budapest. I asked Mr. László Baán, the Director General of the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, what had happened, why all of us weren’t working together. Then, when I saw that Márton Orosz was organising the exhibition, it became clear to me that he had the support of Madame Taburno. For the record, Mr. Orosz had been appointed Scientific Advisor to the Michéle Vasarely Foundation in Puerto Rico shortly before that. That foundation is not a public, non-profit organization like the one Victor and Claire Vasarely set up in 1971, but a commercial enterprise.

Is that why you decided not to grant the reproduction rights?

It is important to understand that I was not against organising the exhibition in Seoul itself. A French newspaper, Libération, wrote that I had prevented the exhibition, which is not true, because the exhibition was held. The Belgian La Libre and the Hungarian HVG copied this article almost word for word without contacting me. I managed to get these three newspapers to publish a notice of correction.

There were several reasons why I could not accept the Seoul exhibition in the format in which it was held. The first was that the Korean museum initially wanted to work with the Vasarely Foundation, but then they changed their minds. The second was that it made no sense to move all the works of art from the Vasarely Museum in Budapest to be temporarily exhibited abroad for several months. Transporting all of Victor Vasarely's donated works on a single plane was very risky. The third reason was the aforementioned activity of Director Márton Orosz, who had become a scientific adviser to the Michèle Vasarely Foundation in Puerto Rico. Moreover, when they donated those pieces to their country of birth, my grandparents certainly did not expect the museum to someday be emptied for months and the pieces to be replaced by a collection of posters and silk-screen prints. (The leadership of the Budapest museum responded to these arguments. You can read about this in our first article in this series.)

International retrospectives are usually organised by borrowing the most important works from different museums and private collections. If one is a fan of Vasarely's works and is specifically interested in the pieces at the Budapest museum, they will go to 6 Szentlélek tér in Óbuda.

We are now sitting in Aix-en-Provence in a much bigger museum, the 48-year-old grandiose building of the Vasarely Foundation, built by your grandparents Claire and Victor Vasarely with their own money, which you have been managing for 15 years. The building has recently been renovated, but some work is still ongoing. What has been completed and what remains to be done?

In recent years, between 2013 and 2019, the building underwent a complete renovation, including an upgrading of the air conditioning, the heating, the ceiling lights, the external façade and the park. We are finished with the bulk of the work. To date, we have also restored 20 monumental works of art, which are now on display inside, with 24 more left to go. How we will progress with the work is a matter of time and finances, and we are looking for private sponsors for this both nationally and internationally.

In the beginning, from 1970 onwards, the Foundation was based in Gordes. The Foundation manages the collections of the Musée didactique de Gordes (1970-1996) and the Centre architectonique d'Aix-en-Provence (1976-). In 2013, the building was declared a historic monument and in 2020 it became part of the Musée de France. The Foundation is a private non-profit institution with the French State represented on its Board of Directors by someone from the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Culture.

Your grandfather Victor Vasarely was very generous, he donated many works of art to the Foundation.

My grandparents donated a total of 44 monumental works and 798 original studies for the display cabinets (He shows us Victor Vasarely's own invention: 22 clear, mobile cabinets, each with about twenty pictures. Each time a button is pressed, another picture appears), and about 430 original works previously displayed in Gordes – most of which were also displayed in cabinets – to Aix-en-Provence. Vasarely also donated 20,000 signed and numbered silkscreens to the Foundation (in Aix and in Gordes), with the express purpose of their sales securing the running of the institution.

There are currently forty-four works on display which we call a 'monumental integration': 42 of these are on the walls and there are two sculptures on view. The previously mentioned 798 original studies on art and architecture used to be on display on the first floor between 1976 and 1996. These studies eventually left the Aix Centre in 1997. In 1999, nearly 340 studies were returned by André and Jean-Pierre Vasarely, and since 2010, we have been able to recover more than 300 studies. However, more than 200 studies are still missing and we are looking for them, as well as the 430 or so original works which used to be exhibited in Gordes between 1970 and 1996.

Do you occasionally need to sell works of art in order to run the Foundation?

We were only allowed to sell the 20 000 prints made specifically for this purpose, not the originals, which constituted part of the historical and inalienable donations. The prints were collected between 1996 and 1997 by my father, my uncle and my stepmother, Madame Taburno. Of the 20 000 prints, only 3 000 were returned to Aix two years later. My uncle André returned nearly 1,500 prints to the foundation a few years ago, the rest have yet to be returned. André also returned 37 works of art that were previously exhibited in Gordes. After several years of contention, André is back on my side, on the side of the Foundation.

He is now 93 years old and under your guardianship.

Yes, I have been his guardian since 2013 and I have to submit a report to the judge every year. He is in good physical health, but has lost all short-term memory. However, he remembers the past with clarity and his Hungarian remains fresh.

Last spring, the FBI seized 112 works of art from your stepmother in Puerto Rico. You have said on several occasions that you expect these works to be returned to the foundation.

The 112 pieces of art seized by the FBI in Puerto Rico last spring are part of the 430 original works that were exhibited in Gordes between 1970 and 1996. Two court rulings – one issued in 2014 by the Paris Court of Appeal and one in 2015 by the Supreme Court – stated explicitly that these pieces should have never left France and that they remain the property of the Vasarely Foundation. I am working with the foundation to reclaim the pieces that were illegally taken from the Vasarely Foundation between 1995 and 1997. (Our interview with Michèle Taburno-Vasarely is available here.)

The Château de Gordes and the Vasarely Museum it housed were closed in 1996 by Madame Taburno – then president of the foundation – and her friends. A year later, all the pieces from there were sent to Paris (to Madame Taburno and my father) and to Annet-sur-Marne (where Vasarely lived and worked). At the time, my grandfather was under my father Jean-Pierre's guardianship. The decision about this whole operation was made by an arbitrage, or arbitration tribunal, made up of people close to Madame Taburno, and interestingly enough, neither the French State nor the two towns concerned prevented the family members from dispersing the foundation's artefacts.

Michèle Taburno-Vasarely resigned as president in '97 after a year and a half.

But she remained vice-president, and from then until 2007, the three or four presidents who were in charge were all very close to her. It doesn't matter that she was no longer president, she still controlled things from behind the scenes.

The majority of the reports suggest that it wasn't during that time that the works of art disappeared from the foundation, but between 1981 and 1993, when Charles Debbasch, the dean of the local law school, was president.

Debbasch did not actually steal works of art from the foundation, as my family claimed in the mid-1990s. He stole privately owned works of art from my grandfathers' residence and workshop in Annet-sur-Marne, and embezzled money from the foundation. A French court actually convicted him of this, which is why he fled to Togo in 1995. He never stole works of art from Aix and Gordes that belonged to the foundation. It was family members who stole those works from the foundation between 1995 and 1997.

Are there any traces of this or court decisions to support it?

Some of the works of art were sold by my father, my uncle, my stepmother and the lawyers involved in the arbitrage. Between 1995 and 1997, the arbitration tribunal ruled that the foundation should give 950 million francs to my father and my uncle as heirs of my grandmother, who died in 1990. Since the foundation did not possess the funds, Madame Taburno, my father, my uncle and the lawyers took the works of art from the Vasarely Foundation in Gordes.

Following several legal proceedings, an unappealable court decision in 2014 and 2015 ruled that the arbitrage was invalid because several people had stolen works of art from the foundation. We know which works these are, we know their dimensions and their titles. But apart from knowing these 112 works of art, we have little evidence of who their current owners are. With some of them, we don't know where they are at all, they could be in private hands, with auction houses or gallery owners. The reason for this is that many prefer to wait and let the pieces rest in their homes for ten to twenty years. So, unfortunately, this takes a lot of time.

Some of the elements of your family's story, especially the feuds, are hard to follow for the outside world.

This was only true before the court rulings were made.

Let's certainly discuss that too. In an interview you once said: "it's not fun, but I often liken this situation to the disputes over inheritance in a family with less money and more humble ancestry who would kill each other over a colour TV, a video camera or a tablet". But you have also said that the whole thing is only difficult to understand if one views the Vasarely affair as a conflict between people.

It is not a conflict between people, nor is it a dispute about inheritance. The dispute is not between Michèle Taburno and Pierre Vasarely, that is, between stepmother and stepson; hence the solution should not come from Madame Taburno and myself, but from the American and French courts.

So the decades-long tension between you and your stepmother is because of the 112 works of art which Michèle Taburno-Vasarely admits were once in the foundation's possession, but argues that they were later given to her officially, in accordance with the law. These are the works of art that the FBI took from Michèle Taburno-Vasarely's house last spring.

She is facing criminal charges, which, although many people claim so, were not brought by me, but by Mr Xavier Huertas, who was appointed administrator of the Vasarely Foundation in 2007. When I heard that the foundation was to be permanently closed down, I went to the court in Aix-en-Provence and asked the judge to appoint someone who was independent. They chose Mr Huertas. After a while, he came to see how flawed the foundation's operations were under the previous leaders. The case went from one judge to another between 2009 and 2023. Finally, the last judge cooperated with the US justice system which led to the FBI's intervention in Puerto Rico in the spring of 2023. The French and US judicial authorities are now working closely together on the case.

The archive is still in the possession of Michèle Taburno-Vasarely, and it seems that the FBI wasn't interested in it, although according to a court decision it also belongs to you.

The archive was awarded to us by the French judicial system in 2012, but Madame Taburno has kept it nonetheless. Obviously, I am not going to get on a plane to Puerto Rico and point a gun at her to enforce a court order. I am a civilised man, even with 50 percent of the blood in my veins being Hungarian – of which I am very proud, by the way.

However, according to experts, it is difficult to provide credibility tests without an archive.

Unless one is an expert in the artist's work, which I am. Since 2003, As a member of the Union Française des Experts, I have been officially recognized as an expert in the art world since 2003. Furthermore, in 1993, my grandfather appointed me as sole universal heir and the holder of the rights to his oeuvre. Our foundation here also has an archive and our scientific committee has a wealth of information. However, it is also a fact that the archives in Puerto Rico contain a large number of documents that cover much of my grandfather's and my father's entire body of work. Her refusal to comply with the court orders and her flight to the other side of the world also indicates that Mrs Taburno is seeking to dodge responsibility rather than accept responsibility for her reprehensible actions. We therefore await the verdict, the fate of the 112 works of art is now in the hands of the US courts.

What outcomes do you expect, what scenarios do you have in mind?

I only have one scenario in mind: the works of art must return to France, they should be brought back here, to the Vasarely Foundation. This kind of cooperation between France and the United States is very rare, so you can imagine how significant this case is.

Indeed, Serge Tournaire, the chief investigating judge of the Paris court is reported to have travelled to Puerto Rico himself.

I have never spoken to him or met him, but I heard that he was present when the artefacts were identified and seized. But back to the case: these works arrived in the US illegally from Europe in 2004-2005 – they had no insurance nor shipping documents and arrived rolled up like carpets – and then starting in 2012 they were moved from Chicago to Puerto Rico.

Why do you think Michèle Taburno-Vasarely moved first to Chicago and then to Puerto Rico with the works of art in tow?

Money is definitely one of the reasons. But why outsiders helped her do it is also a question. I think the most important question of all is why Madame Taburno left France in the mid-two thousands, two years after her husband's death.

I was also curious about this, so I asked her. She said you were the main reason.

I know exactly what kind of answers she gives to journalists: because she could no longer bear my person, because I threatened her, because I was a bully, and so on. I think the real reason why she made that decision was because she found it easier to defend herself from a distance. If someone is innocent and able to clarify all the details, they would stay.

When was the last time the two of you saw each other?

If I remember correctly, I saw her in Chicago in 2011 because of a lawsuit. To the best of my recollection, that was the last time.

In the interview quoted earlier, you also said that "I have been forced to file claims in French, Italian, English, German and American courts", so you are not just targeting your stepmother. Part of your work for several decades has consisted of fighting lawsuits and going to court.

The background is always the same: as I said, my concern is for the works that used to be exhibited in Gordes and Aix, because they have to return to the Foundation. The court’s decision about this is not subject to appeal. People often accuse me of being a maniac because I am constantly fighting in court, but all I am trying to do is enforce my grandfather's will and the wishes of my grandparents.

Your grandfather had two wills, one from early '91 and the other from April '93. Your father, stepmother, uncle and aunt claimed that the second will was not valid because you dictated it.

In the '93 will it is written: 'I am appointing Pierre to manage my work', but my family did not recognise this, they considered another will from '91 to be valid. Madame Taburno, who was representing the interests of my father and my uncle, forced me to file a lawsuit in January 1998, which led to a legal battle that lasted five years. Finally, in 2003, the Paris tribunal ruled that the 1993 will was valid and superseded the one from 1991. This verdict was upheld by the Paris Court of Appeal in 2005.

My father died in 2002. My stepmother and my uncle lodged an appeal in 2003. From then on, I was acting against my uncle, André and Michèle Taburno, who, like me, was my father's legal successor. The final ruling in this case came in 2005, when the Paris Court of Appeal again ruled that Victor Vasarely's will of 1993 was the valid one. According to the courts, I am the universal heir of Victor Vasarely.

Why do you think Victor Vasarely appointed you as his sole and universal heir?

After my grandmother died in 1990, her two sons and their wives started to fight; my grandfather watched on helplessly. My father and my uncle were members of the foundation's board for 25 years, and four years after my grandmother's death they both felt excluded from the legacy. This is still unbelievable to me, even today. As a reminder, later on it was Madame Taburno who handled their financial and inheritance interests. That is probably why Vasarely made the decision he did.

My father and my uncle argued that by 1993 my grandfather was already suffering from dementia. Saying that Vasarely was not in a good mental state in 1993 is ridiculous, since that was when he was in the middle of a lawsuit with Charles Debbasch, who was the chairman of the Vasarely Foundation at the time. A month after the will had been drawn up, in May, my grandfather hosted French – and perhaps Hungarian – journalists in Annet-sur-Marne, and invited politicians to lunch; could all his guests have been corrupt?

Your family members have also accused you of practically dictating this version of the will to your grandfather.

This was their constant argument for the seven years of the trial, until 2005. And later, in other lawsuits as well. My grandparents were backing me all their lives, they described me on several occasions as the future of the foundation, as the only force that could preserve the oeuvre, because André is a doctor and Jean-Pierre is an artist. My family members have also accused me of being violent, good-for-nothing and malicious, of having done a lot of terrible things, of having stolen works of art from my grandfather. All judicial proceedings have supported my interpretation.

You mentioned that it was difficult for you to file a lawsuit against your own family members in 1998. Did it ever occur to you to withdraw that claim?

It was met with a very strong reaction from my father, but we had not yet broken off relations then. After a while, however, it became impossible for me to have any contact with my father and my uncle. During that time, Madame Taburno was the one managing their daily lives and representing their interests.

My first son, Ugo, was born in 1995 and I did think about how unhealthy that situation was. Because of that, I considered stepping back at first, because my relationship with my father was more important to me than that. But then I started receiving letters from the notary public saying that the will from 1993 was a forgery, that I had ordered my grandfather to write it that way and that my family members were calling me a cheat and a thief.

In early January 1998, I took the train from Aix-en-Provence to Paris to visit my father. I knew that he went down every morning to get his croissant and his favourite newspaper, Liberation, and I knew that I could therefore meet him in the street near his apartment at 6:45 am. So I went there, but I missed him by five or six minutes. I went to his flat, rang the bell, went up the stairs, and got to his door. He saw me but he didn't open the door. I wrote a little note saying that I'd be there for the next thirty minutes, and if he'd like, we could talk. He didn't come. From then on I knew that the situation was irreversible. At the time, in the late nineties, it was very difficult to explain to myself that he was no longer my father and André was no longer my uncle, because they were both under the influence of their wives. From then on, showing the truth became my mission.

Did this situation change before your father's death?

I saw him twice more in court in Paris. The last time we met was in 2001, during the trial against Charles Debbasch in Aix, but we didn't speak, even though we were sitting on the same bench. Then we saw each other in front of the court building, when my father noticed my son Ugo, went up to him, took him in his arms and started to cry. It is very difficult for me to talk about that to this day. That was the last time I saw him alive. In my eyes, he had always been manipulated by my stepmother. In the end, it didn't occur to me to drop the lawsuit, but at the same time, it was very difficult for me that my sons couldn't see their grandfather, who died the following year. But Yvaral will always remain in my memory as my best friend. No one can take away the wonderful camaraderie we shared. Up until my grandfather's death, we had a very close relationship.

All the major events in your past are linked to the Vasarely inheritance. What is it like for you to live with this legacy?

It was terribly difficult for many years, because I felt like I was up against everybody else. At the same time, knowing that I was on the right path empowered me. I fought against Charles Debbasch, against my relatives, which is terrible, but I knew I had to go through with it. If someone had told me in 1997 that it would drag on for thirty years, I'm not sure I would have started it again, but I'm glad I did. I'm happy that people are coming to the Foundation to see the pieces, I'm pleased with the collaborations we have with the Pompidou Centre and Pécs, and I'm also happy that I have a normal relationship with all my Hungarian friends. Little by little, the family's honour is being restored.

Experts say that the artist's current image could be tarnished and the price of his works could be negatively affected by this decades-long dispute.

There certainly are and have been consequences, but I am not interested in the problems of the market and the richest people. I am interested in what my grandfather, who believed in social art, believed in: getting his art to as many people as possible, including the poorest ones. That's the only reason why he created the foundation, why he donated so many pieces to the two Hungarian museums. He wanted to take art to the streets, he believed in community art. The popularity and perception of an artist is subject to change anyway, just like the value of shares or property prices.

You mentioned a few things you're happy about. What are you most proud of in all that you have achieved so far?

I am most proud of my wife and my sons. From time to time someone will say that of course it's easy for me, I don't have to work, I have many works of art and money. It is difficult to deal with these accusations, even though they are not true. I am not a believer, but I do believe in truth and justice. I really hope that this whole affair will be like an American movie where the bad guys always lose in the end.

Speaking of a happy ending, do you see any chance of the legal battles coming to an end at some point?

Yes, I believe in justice and if I should lose in any of the cases, I will accept that. This is my last battle. We have to wait and see what the French and American courts decide. We are already at the finish line.

Now that I have spoken to both you and Michèle Taburno-Vasarely, I can see that, depending on who I sit down with, I will be presented with a different reality. Michèle Taburno-Vasarely showed us many documents, including handwritten ones, in three languages, which fully support her reality, while you showed us documents which support yours.

Madame Taburno has also presented her documents to her lawyers and to various judges in the course of the different legal proceedings that have been dragging on since 1998. Most of those documents are false, they were created after the fact. (We also asked Michèle Taburno-Vasarely about this allegation and she replied that all her documents were genuine. As she said, experts had examined her documents in Chicago and concluded that they were genuine. She also said that no court had ever declared her documents to be false.)

The key question is why Madame Taburno left France so abruptly in 2004, along with her inheritance. Why did she choose to go into exile? I feel that the very questions contain the answers. Mr Debbasch fled to Togo! Madame Taburno fled to Puerto Rico! And I stayed in France.

Fortunately, it is not my place to clarify such things. Do you consider it a possibility that the pieces seized by the FBI will remain in Puerto Rico?

No! And many more pieces of art should follow after them!