Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza sued over his family's Bermuda trust and sold his collection to Spain for $350 million

Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza inherited the TBG business group and an Old Master collection from his father in 1947. He married five times and had four children. He adopted Borja, son of his fifth wife, Carmen Cervera, a former Miss Spain. He had signed the family business, about $2 billion, over to his five children through a trust set up in Bermuda, and his eldest son, Georg Heinrich, managed it. In 1997 the baron and Carmen sued in Bermuda to take back control of the trust. Under the trust, Carmen would receive all of it if she won and outlived him. By 2001 Forbes put the fees at about $65 million. In 1988 the baron agreed to lend Spain 775 works for later sale. The museum opened in Madrid in 1992, and in June 1993 Spain bought the works for $350 million. Shortly before his death in April 2002 the baron signed a settlement known as the Basel Pact, which ended the case^†. He is buried in the family vault at Schloss Landsberg near Essen. Georg Heinrich died in 2022. Carmen's own collection hung in the museum on loan, renewed free each year from 2012. On 9 February 2022 she and Borja leased 330 works, valued at $1.7 billion, to the state for 15 years at €6.5 million a year. The state has first refusal if they sell. In 2026 the lease runs to 2037, and Gauguin's Mata Mua is one work they cannot sell under it.