Displaying items by tag: cornelius gurlitt

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 court handling the late art collector Cornelius Gurlitt's inheritance says it has formally authorized the return of the first two paintings from his trove to their rightful owners' descendants.

The Munich district court said Tuesday it approved the handover of Henri Matisse's "Woman Sitting in an Armchair" and Max Liebermann's "Two Riders on the Beach" after both potential heirs to Gurlitt's collection endorsed the move.

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.

Minutes after the Kunstmuseum Bern in Switzerland revealed for the first time a list of artworks Cornelius Gurlitt had stashed in his second home near the Austrian Alps, its promise of full transparency seemed to clear away decades of murky silence about a delicate Pissarro painting showing the Louvre in Paris and bridges spanning the Seine.

The picture, listed as “Paris Kathedrale,” was one of 250 artworks included in the “Salzburg collection” of Mr. Gurlitt, who died in May and left his entire estate to the museum.

After accepting the legacy of Cornelius Gurlitt, next steps are being taken after the Kunstmuseum Bern, the German Federal Government, and the Free State of Bavaria signed the agreement in Berlin on 24 November, 2014, and thus formally sealed it. As promised by the Kunstmuseum Bern, in the interests of transparency it is now making public the lists of the artworks that were discovered in Cornelius Gurlitt’s flat in the Schwabing district of Munich and his house in Salzburg.

The Kunstmuseum Bern is actively fulfilling its obligations after accepting the Gurlitt legacy. In consultation with the parties of the agreement and the task force of Schwabing Art Trove, the Kunstmuseum management has decided to release the lists of the artworks discovered in Schwabing and Salzburg as a first step.

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.

Jewish World Congress president Ronald Lauder has publicly threatened the Kunstmuseum Bern with an "avalanche" of lawsuits if the institution accepts the collection of approximately 1,300 artworks bequeathed to it by the late Cornelius Gurlitt - stated in an article published by German weekly "Der Spiegel." The museum is currently still in the process of making this delicate decision - whether or not to accept the collection - which includes works by Henri Matisse, Max Liebermann, Otto Dix, and Marc Chagall, among others famous artists.

Gurlitt died on May 6th of this year, leaving the entire collection to the Swiss museum - but nearly 600 works from the collection are suspected to be of questionable provenance, possibly Nazi loot.

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 Claude Monet landscape has been discovered in a suitcase that belonged to late art hoarder Cornelius Gurlitt.

The case, which was left at a hospital where the German had been staying, was handed over to the administrators of his estate.

They are tasked with finding out if the newly uncovered artwork was stolen by the Nazis during World War Two.

Gurlitt, who died in May aged 81, had a stash of 1,280 works of art hidden in his Munich apartment.