Displaying items by tag: Restitution

It’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to fight the return of artwork stolen from Jews during the Holocaust, even museum academics who have an interest in keeping the works in their collections. Not only does there seem to be a moral imperative to right these nearly century-old wrongs. On the face of it, such battles are simply bad public relations.

Yet the past decade has seen a series of high-profile, protracted restitution battles across the U.S. and Europe. The case of the so-called Gurlitt hoard, wherein more than 1,200 pieces of (mostly) stolen art was discovered in a Munich apartment in 2012, has yet to be fully resolved.

A Nazi-era restitution claim for a Renoir landscape at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery has been rejected. The Spoliation Advisory Panel recommended in a report that The Coast at Cagnes, Sea, Mountains (around 1910) should not be returned to the heirs of Jakob and Rosa Oppenheimer because there is insufficient evidence that it had been the subject of a Nazi forced sale in Berlin. The Oppenheimers, a German Jewish couple, had fled to France in 1933. Jakob died in an internment camp in 1941 and Rosa was murdered in Auschwitz two years later.

Three years after German authorities uncovered a vast collection of one of Adolf Hitler’s main art dealers, the first artwork restituted from the trove will head to auction next month.

On June 24, Sotheby’s in London will ask between $540,000 and $850,000 for Max Liebermann’s “Two Riders on a Beach,” a 1901 scene of two elegantly dressed men riding chestnut-colored horses beside a surf.

A former longtime Jasper Johns assistant was ordered Thursday to spend 18 months behind bars after admitting he stole artworks from the pop artist's Connecticut studio and arranged for them to be sold by a Manhattan gallery for nearly $10 million.

James Meyer, 53, of Salisbury, Connecticut, was also ordered to pay $13 million in restitution and to forfeit $3.9 million.

U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken said he believed Meyer was genuinely remorseful and was primarily a "kind, caring, thoughtful" man who committed a serious offense, selling unauthorized artworks on at least three occasions from 2006 to 2011, pocketing more than $4 million.

Germany said Wednesday experts had established a Camille Pissarro painting from the Cornelius Gurlitt art trove was looted by the Nazis and should be returned to the heirs of its rightful owners.

The oil painting from 1902 entitled "La Seine vue du Pont-Neuf, au fond le Louvre" (The Seine seen from the Pont Neuf) is "absolutely certain" to have been looted by Hitler's regime, the German culture ministry said.

"For the restitution, we are already in contact with the heiress of the former owner," Culture Minister Monika Gruetters said in a statement, without identifying the family.

Tate trustees have temporarily reversed their decision to restitute a Constable seascape to a Nazi-era spoliation claimant. Last year the UK’s Spoliation Advisory Panel recommended that the picture should be returned to the heirs of its pre-war Hungarian owner.

A Tate spokeswoman told "The Art Newspaper": “New information has come to light on the history of the painting "Beaching a Boat, Brighton," 1924, by John Constable in Tate’s collection. This was reviewed by Tate. The Tate trustees have now approached the [DCMS] Secretary of State to invite the Spoliation Advisory Panel to review the new information. We cannot comment further at this stage.”

A lawyer representing a Jewish family trying to retrieve a long-lost Matisse painting looted by the Nazis said Tuesday a deal had been signed with the German government for its restitution.

London-based attorney Christopher Marinello, who works for the Rosenberg family, said that the order inked by German Culture Minister Monika Gruetters had now paved the way for the 1921 masterpiece "Seated Woman" to be handed back.

"I can confirm that an agreement has been signed for restitution of the Rosenberg Matisse," he told AFP in an email, following a report in German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to be published Wednesday.

One of Gustav Klimt's most famous paintings should not be returned to the heirs of its original Jewish owners, an Austrian panel has ruled.

The "Beethoven Frieze" was looted by the Nazis but returned to the family of Jewish industrialist August Lederer after World War Two.

But it was subject to an export ban.

The heirs had argued this forced Lederer's son Erich to sell the work at a cut-rate price. The museum where it is now on display disputed this claim.

With the recent loosening of US restrictions on trade with Cuba, prisoner exchanges and the promise of warmer relations to come, the two countries are closer than they have been for 50 years. But for those Cuban exiles in the US whose art was seized by the Cuban authorities in the 1960s, restitution of their property is still no closer. Cuba continues to reject the charge that the art in question was stolen, and has no mechanism for its return.

The latest case involves a Cuban-born neurosurgeon who lives in Jacksonville, Florida. Javier Garcia-Bengochea is claiming Francesco Guardi’s "View of the Lagoon between the Fondamenta Nuove and Murano," 1757, from the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana. Garcia-Bengochea says that one of his relatives bought the painting at Parke-Bernet in New York for $1,000 in 1957 and then took it to Cuba.

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.