Displaying items by tag: heirs

The heirs of a Jewish Cabaret performer who was murdered by the Nazis in 1941 persuaded a Manhattan judge Tuesday to block the sale and transport of two Egon Schiele paintings that were part of his extensive collection.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Charles Ramos ordered London-based art dealer Richard Nagy and the Conservancy that runs the Park Avenue Armory's annual art show to freeze the disposal of the watercolors — worth an estimated $5 million — until he can hold a hearing December 1.

The decadelong quest included archive detectives, location mix-ups, vintage postcards and a coveted art collection torn apart by war. When it was done, the Museum of Modern Art decided to return an Ernst Ludwig Kirchner landscape to the heirs of its original, Jewish owner.

The museum announced Monday that the German expressionist painter’s 1917-18 canvas “Sand Hills (By Grünau)” rightly belongs to the heirs of a Berlin writer, Max Fischer, who had to leave his art behind when he fled Germany for the U.S. in late 1935.

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.

A Nazi-looted painting by Hans Wertinger has been restituted to the heirs of the Jewish art dealers Isaac Rosenbaum and Saemy Rosenberg by the German state of Baden-Würtemberg.

The work Bildnis Pfalzgraf Johann III (ca. 1526) - which belonged to the collection of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart - has been returned almost 80 years after the dealers, who sold the work in 1936, were forced to pay the proceeds from the sale into a Nazi-government account.

Five paintings missing since World War II are being returned to collections in Germany at the behest of the heirs of their American acquirers.

The paintings, including three won by an American GI in a poker game, were turned over to the German government on Tuesday. Their return was organized by the State Department and the Monuments Men Foundation, which promotes the work of those who protected cultural works during the war and seeks to track down and repatriate objects that went missing.

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.

The heirs of Nazi-era Jewish art dealers say they have filed a lawsuit in the U.S. suing Germany and a German museum for the return of a medieval treasure trove worth an estimated $226 million.

The suit, which attorneys said was filed late Monday in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., is the latest salvo in a long-running campaign by the heirs for return of the so-called Welfenschatz, or Guelph Treasure — which they claim their ancestors sold under Nazi pressure.

Would Picasso have donated 271 works to an electrician who worked for him for a few years in south-east France?

A French court has begun to contemplate that mystery as the three-day trial begins of Pierre Le Guennec and his wife, Danielle. They claim the artist or his wife gave them the 180 lithographs, collages, and paintings and 91 drawings in about 1970 when Le Guennec began working as a general handyman at Picasso’s estate. Picasso heirs and a state prosecutor describe the couple’s account as ridiculous.

A district court in Düsseldorf ruled on Tuesday that German art adviser Helge Achenbach must pay €19.4 million in damages to the heirs of Aldi Supermarket heir Berthold Albrecht, the DPA reports. The ruling culminates a civil court case brought against Achenbach following allegations that he defrauded Albrecht of up to €23 million (see Fraud Claim Against Art Adviser). The art adviser is also part of a criminal trial, taking place in Essen. He has confessed to portions of the allegations (see Achenbach Gives Surprise Partial-Confession in Fraud Case and Achenbach Confesses to Yet More Fraud).

Meanwhile, German auction house Van Ham has won the rights to sell artworks still owned by the adviser's bankrupt company, Achenbach Art Consulting.

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.