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Dresden in 1900.
Vaslav Nijinsky (1899-1950) in “L’après-midi d’un faune”, 1912.
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon”, 1907.
Russian Tsar building, Belgrade.
PICASSO, THE LEFFMANNS & THE MET
A judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit by the great-grand-niece of a German Jewish businessman that asked the Metropolitan Museum of Art to return one of its most valuable Picassos, “The Actor.”
In court papers, Judge Preska described at length the persecution that the Leffmanns suffered and the desperation they must have felt. But she ruled that the estate could not show Mr. Leffmann had been forced to sell the painting under duress because any pressure he experienced was not the fault of the buyers or the party being sued, the museum, but rather the Nazis and their allies.
Read full article HERE.
A New York investor and art collector is ignoring pleas to return a painting looted by the Nazis
The painting was part of a vast art collection owned by prominent banker James von Bleichroeder (photo above, in 1908). One of the most prominent paintings in their collection was “The Raising of Lazarus,” (below) a famous work by an unknown German artist.
Read the article HERE.
WHO WAS HILDEBRAND GURLITT?
THE GURLITT EXHIBITIONS – WORKS
by CLAUDE MONET
EDGAR DEGAS
AUGUSTE RODIN
ALBRECHT DÜRER
JAN BRUEGHEL THE YOUNGER
PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR
More about the Gurlitt Exhibitions HERE.
To know more about the artists click on their names in blue.
PAUL KLEE – “SWAMP LEGEND”
After 26 years in court, the longest-running German legal wrangle over Nazi-looted art ended on Wednesday with a settlement that will reimburse a family for the seizure of a masterpiece by Paul Klee that was once scorned as the work of a degenerate.
Read the article HERE.
“THE RAISING OF LAZARUS”
“The Raising of Lazarus”, painted by an anonymous German artist, was salvaged by the Monuments Men at the end of World War II before entering the Bavarian State Paintings Collection in 1961, where it remained until now.
The work, painted in oils on wood, is thought to have been created between 1530 and 1540 and was part of a collection assembled by James von Bleichröder, the son of Gerson von Bleichröder, a Jewish banker who rose to fame as Otto von Bismarck’s personal financial adviser. James von Bleichröder died in 1937.
Nearly 80 years after it was stolen from the family, the painting, valued at about $250,000, was returned to Frank Winkel at a ceremony in Munich. Mr. Winkel lives in Munich and is the heir of James von Bleichröder’s daughter Ellie, who survived incarceration at the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
View full article HERE.
BARON MÓR LIPÓT HERZOG
Baron Mór Lipót Herzog (1869-1934) was a passionate Jewish art collector in pre-war Hungary. Over his lifetime, he assembled the Herzog Collection, one of Europe’s great private collections of art and the largest in Hungary prior to World War II. However, the Herzog family’s legacy as patrons of the arts came to a sudden halt during the Hungarian Holocaust, when the Hungarian government, assisted by the Nazi regime in Germany, systematically annihilated its Jewish population and plundered their personal property and cultural treasures.
Cleveland Museum of Art returns ancient Roman portrait stolen from Italy in WWII
The Cleveland Museum of Art and the government of Italy announced Tuesday that the museum would return to Italy an ancient Roman marble portrait head of Drusus Minor after learning that it apparently had been stolen in 1944 from a provincial museum near Naples.
Italian archaeologists excavated the Drusus head in 1925 or 1926 in Sessa Aurunca, in the Caserta Province of Campania, Italy, about an hour’s drive north of Naples.
The museum believes the work was made after the death of Drusus in 23 A.D., when his wife, Claudia Livia Julia, known as “Livilla” or “Little Livia,” allegedly poisoned him at age 34.
Read more HERE.
Poland recovers artwork looted in World War II
The canvas “Ships in a Rough Sea” by the Dutch artist Simon de Vlieger (1601-1653) has been returned to the National Museum in Warsaw.
View full article HERE.
Artwork Nazis stole in WWII returning to Jewish owner’s heir
Max Liebermann’s “Basket Weavers” is set to return to the American heirs of its original Jewish owner after it was confiscated by the Nazis, jockeyed by an unscrupulous German art trader, and ultimately purchased by an Israeli Holocaust survivor unaware of its murky past.
View full article HERE.
Germany pays €1.2 million for Kirchner painting seized by Nazis
A 1913 painting by Expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner that was seized by the Nazis as “degenerate art” will remain in a Ludwigshafen museum after the German government and others paid €1.2 million to the heir of the painting’s original owner.
“The Judgment of Paris”, which shows three nude women and a clothed man posing in Kirchner’s studio, was looted from Jewish art collector Hans Hess during the Nazi era, but has been on display at the Wilhelm-Hack Museum in Ludwigshafen since 1979.
Hess’s heir agreed to allow the painting to stay on display at the museum after various donors, including the German federal and state governments and the Ernst von Siemens Foundation, raised money to compensate her, the German government said on Friday.
Read full article HERE.
More about Ernst Ludwig Kirchner HERE.
Son of Nazi governor returns art stolen from Poland during second world war
An estimated half a million art objects were plundered from Poland by the occupying Nazi and Soviet forces during the second world war.
Horst Wächter, the fourth of the SS general’s six children, has spent years trying to return a painting taken by his parents from the Potocki Palace. On Sunday, he attended a ceremony in Kraków at which three stolen works were returned to the Polish government.
“In difficult times there have always been leaders who convince their followers that the others – all those different from them in culture, language or faith – were responsible for their troubles and that their community has to get rid of them. The Nazi period is definitely doomed to repeat itself.”
Read full article HERE.
Oprah Winfrey Said to Snag $150 Million Selling Klimt to Chinese Buyer
“Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II,” from 1912, depicts a woman in a long, narrow robe and halo-like black hat, standing against an ornate background of mauve and green. The subject, Bloch-Bauer, was the wife of a Jewish industrialist and art patron in Vienna.
The canvas was part of a cache looted by the Nazis and famously restituted by the Austrian government to Bloch-Bauer’s heirs in 2006. The legal battle over the works inspired “Woman in Gold,” a 2015 movie starring Helen Mirren.
Read full article HERE.
Pissarro painting found in Gurlitt collection is restituted to heirs
Pissarro’s View of the Seine from the Pont-Neuf was returned to the heirs of the French-Jewish businessman Max Heilbronn
Camille Pissarro “La Seine vue du Pont-Neuf, au fond le Louvre” (1902) has been found in Gurlitt’s collection and determined as Nazi-looted.
More about Camille Pissarro HERE.
Beauty Bellezza Beauté 