Displaying items by tag: Nazis

The US Supreme Court has rejected the appeal of Pasadena's Norton Simon Museum in the case of the ownership of Lucas Cranach the Elder's paintings "Adam" and "Eve" (both circa 1530). The artworks originally belonged to Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, who in 1940 was forced to flee the Netherlands following the Nazi invasion.

The case, which has been in federal court since 2007, was originally dismissed in the museum's favor in 2012. Goudstikker's daughter-in-law, Marei Von Saher, got a second chance last June, when a judge ruled that the pursuit of her claims did not conflict with US federal policy (see Norton Simon's Nazi-Looted Adam and Eve to Head Back to Court).

A long-standing restitution dispute between Germany's Kunstsammlung NRW and the heirs of the Jewish art dealer Alfred Flechtheim, regarding the provenance of Juan Gris work, "Die Welt" reports. The museum has called on the panel of experts from the so-called Limbach Commission to adjudicate the ongoing issue. The commission's rulings will be officially non-binding, but can hold significant sway in deciding restitution cases. The museum has asked the help of the panel of experts from the Limbach Commission to adjudicate the case.

The Kunstsammlung NRW claims that after years of provenance research it has not any found evidence to support beyond a reasonable doubt that Juan Gris's work "Guitar and Ink Bottle on a Table" (1913) belonged to the Jewish art dealer.

Kunstmuseum Bern (Museum of Fine Arts Bern), Switzerland has agreed, today, to accept artworks from the collection of Cornelius Gurlitt's 1,300 works that has been bequeathed to the museum by German collector. Christoph Schaeublin of the Bern Art Museum told a news conference in Berlin that the museum would accept parts of the artworks bequeathed by Cornelius Gurlitt, who died in May at the age of 81.

The collection has been known colloquially as the “Munich Art Trove,” and collated by Cornelius Gurlitt’s father, Hildebrand Gurlitt. Gurlitt senior was one of four art dealers entrusted with selling so-called degenerate art during the Nazi regime’s rule. The collection includes a number high-value works from the period by Henri Matisse, Max Liebermann, Otto Dix, and Marc Chagall, among others. Originally estimated at the value of nearly £700 million - the value has dropped significantly as many pieces are believed to have been looted from Jewish families by the Nazis.

The Badische Landesmuseum in Karlsruhe, Germany has announced that it has identified seven Nazi looted artworks within its collection. The discovery follows a four-year-long audit of the museum's entire collection, specifically looking for Nazi looted artworks, reported Die Welt.

The six paintings and one late Gothic sculpture had been kept in one of the museum's warehouses for over 70 years. The provenance researcher at the museum, Katharina Siefert, established that the works belonged to a Mannheim-based Jewish family.

The similarities between two art works being auctioned next month by Christie’s and Sotheby’s in New York are striking. Both were created by the Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele. And both once belonged to Fritz Grünbaum, a Viennese cabaret performer whose large art collection was inventoried by Nazi agents after he was sent to the Dachau concentration camp, where he died.

But there is also a notable difference in the way the houses are handling the sales.

When Christie's auctioned off Edgar Degas' “Danseuses” for nearly $11 million in 2009, the catalog noted that the masterpiece was being sold as part of a restitution agreement with the “heirs of Ludwig and Margret Kainer,” German Jews whose vast art collection was seized by the Nazis in the years leading up to World War II.

But now a dozen relatives of the Kainers are stepping forward to object. Not only did they fail to benefit from that sale, they say they were never even told about it, or any other auctions of works once owned by the couple, including pieces by Monet and Renoir.

The Swiss art gallery named as the sole heir of reclusive German art collector Cornelius Gurlitt is to accept his bequest of masterpieces which include works looted by the Nazis from Jews, a Swiss paper reported on Sunday.

Gurlitt, who died in May aged 81, had secretly stored hundreds of works by the likes of Chagall and Picasso at his Munich apartment and a house in nearby Salzburg, Austria.

The collection, worth an estimated 1 billion euros (0.78 billion pounds), contains an as yet undetermined number of works taken by the Nazis from their Jewish owners during World War Two.

A portrait by Gustav Klimt could be put up for sale, potentially fetching over $30 million, to resolve a dispute between a Viennese art foundation and the granddaughter of the woman in the painting, a lawyer for the granddaughter said on Thursday.

Klimt, an Austrian symbolist, painted the portrait of Gertrud Loew in 1902 and it belonged to her at least until 1938, a year before she fled Austria to escape the Nazis.

Her U.S.-based granddaughter, Andrea Felsovanyi, has been contesting ownership with the private Klimt Foundation, which currently holds the work.