[1] His father Hugo Perls had fled Germany and separated from his mother who set up as an art dealer in Paris.
[citation needed] In 1935, after two years in Paris, Klaus moved to New York City and opened the Perls Galleries on East 58th Street near Madison Avenue.
[2] In addition to preparing monographs on Fouquet, Vlaminck and Rufino Tamayo, Mr Perls wrote catalogues raisonnés for the artists Chaïm Soutine and Jules Pascin.
[4] In 1996, the Perls further donated 13 works by Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, Soutine and Pascin to the Metropolitan.
That gift was one of the largest ever received by the Metropolitan's department of 20th-century art and greatly helped round out the museum's collection.
[5] In 1990, art thieves removed a glass dome from atop the Perls Gallery and stole a 1962 mobile designed by Alexander Calder valued at $1.4 million.
In 2010 lawsuit[7] filed by the Calder Estate,[8][9] dismissed with prejudice by the New York Supreme Court on December 23, 2013,[10] Klaus Perls was accused of fraud.