All posts tagged: NaziLooted

Nazi-Looted Painting in SS Collaborator’s Home—and More Art News

Nazi-Looted Painting in SS Collaborator’s Home—and More Art News

Published by José Betancourt

The Headlines IN MEMORIAM. The legendary Swiss dealer Bruno Bischofberger has died at 86, reports ARTnews. Through his eponymous gallery, founded in 1963, he brought artists famed America to audiences in Europe—and befriended many of them along the way. “I have been involved with Andy Warhol for a large part of my life as an art dealer, collector and friend,” Bischofberger wrote in 2001. He produced Warhol’s film L’amour, is credited with the idea for Warhol to make portraits of people in his entourage, and even suggested that the Pop artist collaborate with Jean-Michel Basquiat for a 1984 series of apintings. Other artists he helped champion include Francesco Clemente, Julian Schnabel, Jean Tinguely, Gerhard Richter, Sol LeWitt, and Donald Judd. He also amassed a large collections of art and design objects, which he stored in a former factory in Zurich that was redesigned by his daughter, Nina Baier-Bischofberger, and her husband, Florian Baier. “My father is a hoarder,” his daughter told W in 2015. “He always wants more, more, more.” Related Articles SKELETONS OUT OF THE CLOSET. A Nazi-looted painting by Toon Kelder, from the famous collection of …

France Reckons With Nazi-Looted Art in a New Paris Museum Gallery

France Reckons With Nazi-Looted Art in a New Paris Museum Gallery

Published by Sam Flores

PARIS (AP) — The painting shows a girl in a bonnet and her younger brother staring across the Normandy coast toward an unknown horizon. The artwork itself faced an unknown future in 1942, when it was acquired in Paris for Adolf Hitler, one of countless works swept up in the Nazi plunder of European Jews. It is also the first such display in France where the paintings are hung so visitors can read the backs. The stamps, labels and inventory marks map how each piece of art moved from private homes into Nazi hands. The painting by Belgian artist Alfred Stevens was originally earmarked for the Führer’s planned museum in Linz, Austria. But by 1943, it was reassigned to Hitler’s mountain home in the Bavaria region of Germany. The museum was never built following Germany’s defeat. No heir came forward, and no one knows who owned it before 1942. A collection of unclaimed art The 1891 Stevens painting is not unique. It is one of 2,200 such artistic orphans in France — known as MNR, …

Dutch Commission Proposes New Guardians for ‘Orphaned’ Nazi-Looted Art

Dutch Commission Proposes New Guardians for ‘Orphaned’ Nazi-Looted Art

Published by Jenni Sidey

A committee appointed by the Dutch government has come up with a plan for a state-owned collection’s controversial holdings, reports the New York Times. The Netherlands Art Property Collection (known as the NK Collection) comprises thousands of priceless objects, including paintings worth millions by Dutch Golden Age masters, repatriated by the Allies from Germany to the Netherlands after World War II. Most of these objects were looted from Jews who were killed, deported, or forced to sell their holdings by the Nazis. While provenance research overseen by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science remains ongoing, the items’ rightful owners have yet to be located. Related Articles The collection is currently under the custodianship of the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, which oversees its storage and makes loans of art to museums and government buildings. Under a proposal issued by the Committee on Heirless Jewish Looted Art, the guardianship of these “orphaned” objects would be given over to a Dutch Jewish foundation, preferably one housed at the Jewish Museum in Amsterdam, where the …

Pinakothek in Munich Returns Nazi-Looted Lesser Ury Painting

Pinakothek in Munich Returns Nazi-Looted Lesser Ury Painting

Published by Jenni Sidey

The Pinakotheken in Munich will return a painting by the German painter Lesser Ury that was auctioned under duress during the Nazi regime in Bavaria. First reported by Monopol, the news signals a renewed push for restitution within Bavaria’s museum sector, long scrutinized for its sluggish handling of Nazi-looted art. Ury, a German-Jewish Impressionist who died in 1931, was known for his evocative depictions of Berlin and Bavaria—nocturnal cafés, rain-drenched streets, and fleeting domestic scenes.  Related Articles The Pinakothek museums have returned his painting Interior with Children (The Siblings), which was originally ownedby the Berlin banker Curt Goldschmidt. Undone by the economic policies of the National Socialists—the Nazi Party—the family bank collapsed, forcing the Goldschmidts to auction their assets, including the Ury painting. It is believed to have sold for around 800 Reichsmarks (roughly $4,000 today); by comparison, Ury’s Berlin Impressionist scenes have fetched between $40,000 and $100,000 at auction in more recent years. According to the museum, Goldschmidt fled to Paris in 1937, where he lived in hiding throughout the German occupation, until his death in 1947. “Curt Goldschmidt’s fate is representative of that …