Displaying items by tag: Restitution

On Friday, 31 October 2014, a press conference was held in New York in connection with the recently settled claim for restitution involving a work by Schiele formerly owned by the noted Viennese cabaret artist Fritz Grünbaum, who died in a concentration camp. The watercolor is due to be auctioned at Christie's New York on Wednesday, 5 November 2014.

In the invitation presented to the Leopold Museum Private Foundation to attend the press conference, which was held in the Museum of Jewish Heritage, reference was made to the claim for restitution, refuted by the Leopold Museum Private Foundation, for another painting by Schiele, "Tote Stadt III" [Dead City III], also from Fritz Grünbaum's collection. This work is part of the Leopold Collection and in the possession of the Leopold Museum Private Foundation.

German government-appointed experts on Friday gave the green light to the restitution of one of the most valuable artworks in the trove of late collector Cornelius Gurlitt to its American owners.

As part of a deal with prosecutors, the man accused of smashing a vase by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei in a museum here pleaded guilty Wednesday to criminal mischief but avoided any more jail time beyond the two days he spent behind bars after his arrest.

Maximo Caminero, a 51-year-old artist from the Dominican Republic, will be on probation for 18 months and serve 100 hours of community service by teaching children how to paint. Mr. Caminero also must pay restitution of $10,000, the appraised value of the vase he dropped on the floor of the Pérez Art Museum Miami on Feb. 16 in what he said was a political act.

The president of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald Lauder, urged a leading Spanish museum to return a painting that the Nazis stole from a Jewish art collector.

Lauder, in a statement issued on Friday, called on the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, which is owned by the Spanish state, to stop its legal fight to keep the Impressionist masterpiece “Rue Saint-Honoré, après-midi, effet de pluie,” which the Nazis stole from Lilly Cassirer, a German Jew seeking to flee her homeland in 1939.

The painting was purchased from the painter Camille Pissarro by Lilly Cassirer’s father-in-law, Julius. Her late grandson, Claude, sued for restitution in 2005 in a claim he filed with the United States District Court for the Central District of California.

A 1921 portrait by Matisse found in the private collection of the reclusive Cornelius Gurlitt was looted by the Nazis from a prominent French art collector and should be returned to his heirs, a team of international experts said on Wednesday.

The painting, “Seated Woman/Woman Sitting in Armchair,” depicting a subject in a flowered blouse with a blue fan in her lap, is the first picture from Mr. Gurlitt’s private collection to have its ownership history clarified. The team’s investigation followed an outcry over German authorities’ initial lack of transparency in handling the works, which have become known as the Munich Art Trove.

German cultural commissioner Monika Grütters announced on Friday that the country would increase its cultural funding by €90 million for a total €1.3 billion ($1.76 billion) in allocated funds for 2014. The additional funding marks a seven percent increase over 2013.

Grütters said that the budgetary approval by the Bundestag secured, “a solid foundation for the development and creation of successful cultural-political [initiatives].” Among her major achievements since taking over the post from predecessor Bernd Neumann was the doubling of funds allocated to provenance research. The move followed the Gurlitt saga, which initiated a wealth of renewed public support for restitution efforts. Four million euros are now available annually to assist in such research.

The National Gallery of Victoria has taken off display its “yes-no” van Gogh portrait and agreed that despite it having been in Victoria’s collection for 74 years, it rightfully belongs to two unnamed South African sisters, heirs to an estate dispersed under duress during the rise of Hitler.

In what amounts to the first successful Nazi restitution claim on an artwork in an Australian public collection, NGV’s trustees agree Head of a Man was owned by the late Jewish industrialist Richard Semmel until 1933 when he sold it under duress at auction in Amsterdam.

The Henie Onstad Art Center in Norway has agreed to return a portrait by Henri Matisse to the family of Paul Rosenberg, a Jewish art dealer who had his collection confiscated by Nazis during World War II. The museum was founded in 1968 by the Olympic figure skating champion, Sonja Henie, and her husband, Niels Onstad, a shipping magnate and art collector.

The Matisse painting was among the 162 works seized from Rosenberg by Nazis in 1941. The canvas was briefly in the possession of Hermann Goering, a leading member of the Nazi party. Onstad acquired the Matisse painting, “Woman in Blue in Front of a Fireplace,” in 1950, unaware of its troubled provenance. In 2012, the Rosenberg family’s lawyer contacted the Henie Onstad Art Center and demanded the restitution of the painting. After an extensive investigation, the museum decided to return the work to Rosenberg’s heirs. The painting, which had been one of the museum’s most popular works, is estimated to be worth around $20 million.

Norway is a signatory of the 1998 Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, which requires museums to examine their collections for potentially looted works. If stolen works are found, the museums are required to try to locate the rightful owners. The Henie Onstad Art Center investigated the Matisse painting’s past only after being contacted by the Rosenbergs’ lawyer. 

On February 5, Sotheby’s London’s Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale fetched 163.5 million pounds, significantly more than its pre-sale estimate of 128.4 million pounds. Out of the 89 lots offered, 10 failed to find buyers.

The highlight of the sale was Camille Pissarro’s ‘Boulevard Montmartre, Matinee de Printemps,’ a street scene that sold for a record 19.9 million pounds, nearly five times the previous record for the Impressionist master at auction. The painting, which is widely considered to be one of the most important Impressionist works to appear at auction in the last decade, was originally owned by the Jewish industrialist, Max Silberberg. During World War II, the Nazis forced Silberberg, who perished in a concentration camp, to get rid of his entire collection of 19th and 20th century artworks. ‘Boulevard Montmartre, Matinee de Printemps’ was restituted to Silberberg’s family in 2000.

The auction also saw the highest price for a Vincent Van Gogh painting offered at auction in London when ‘L’Homme est en mer’ sold for 16.9 million pounds. Other highlights included a print by Pablo Picasso titled ‘Composition au Minotaure,’ which sold for a record 10.4 million pounds and a work on paper by Alberto Giacometti titled ‘Homme Traversant une Place par un Matin de Soleil,’ which achieved a record 8.5 million pounds.

Two weeks of London sales kicked off on February 4 at Christie’s where works by Picasso, Rene Magritte and Juan Gris helped an auction reach 177 million pounds, a record for a sale in London. During the sale, Gris’ still-life ‘Nature Morte a la Nappe a Carreaux’ sold for 34.8 million pounds, a world record for the Spanish artist at auction.

German authorities have appointed 13 experts in art history, provenance research and restitution issues to a task force that will be responsible for establishing the history of hundreds of artworks discovered in a dilapidated apartment in Munich this past November. The works, which include masterpieces by Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso and Albrecht Durer, were found in the possession of Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of Hildebrandt Gurlitt. Hildebrandt had been put in charge of selling Nazi looted artworks abroad by Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda.  

Jane Milosch from the Smithsonian, Thierry Bajou from the Musées Nationaux Récupération in France, Sophie Lillie from Vienna, Agnes Peresztegi from Budapest, and Yehudit Shendar and Shlomit Steinberg, both from Israel, will join the task force’s German members -- Uwe Hartmann, the head of Germany’s office for provenance research, art historian Meike Hoffmann, Michael Franz, the head of Germany’s restitution office, Magnus Brechtken, the deputy director for the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, Roland Kempfle, a Munich-based prosecutor, Heike Impelmann from the office for unresolved property issues and Stephanie Tasch, who represents Germany’s 16 states.

First, the task force will research the ownership histories of the drawings, prints and paintings believed to have been stolen by the Nazis from their Jewish owners. The task force will then investigate the works believed to have been looted by the Nazis from public institutions. So far, authorities have begun photographing and publishing the artworks. Over 450 pieces have been added to Germany’s Lost Art Internet Database.