Displaying items by tag: looted

A 17th century painting stolen by the Nazis from a Jewish German art curator in Paris who was later murdered at Auschwitz was returned to the late owner's daughter at a ceremony in New York on Tuesday.

The painting "Portrait of a Man" by Italian Giovanni Battista Moroni was among items looted from August Liebmann Mayer's collection by the Nazis after Germany's invasion of Paris.

The painting, which had been held at the Louvre in Paris, was recovered by US authorities in cooperation with the French government.

California’s District Court has emphatically denied a motion to dismiss a case about the ownership of Lucas Cranach the Elder’s life-size "Adam and Eve," around 1530.

This court ruling is the latest twist in a bitter legal battle that began in Federal Court in 2007 when Marei von Saher, the heir of Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker, filed for ownership of the paintings.

They were part of a collection of more than 1,200 works owned by Goudstikker, who fled the Netherlands in 1940 after the Nazi invasion. The painting were hung outside the home of Nazi Reichsmarschall Herman Göring at one point during the war, according to von Saher’s court filings, but were returned by Allied Forces to the Netherlands in 1945.

An international investigation into antiquities looted from India and smuggled into the United States has taken authorities to the Honolulu Museum of Art.

The museum on Wednesday handed over seven rare artifacts that it acquired without museum officials realizing they were ill-gotten items. Agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will take the items back to New York and, from there, eventually return them to the government of India.

U.S. customs agents say the items were taken from religious temples and ancient Buddhist sites, and then allegedly smuggled to the United States by an art dealer. The dealer, Subhash Kapoor, was arrested in 2011 and is awaiting trial in India. Officials say Kapoor created false provenances for the illicit antiquities.

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.

The Dutch royal family has said it will return a painting from its collection thought to have been looted by the Nazis during World War Two. The painting, by Joris van der Haagen, had been bought by Queen Juliana from a Dutch art dealer in 1960.

The palace said an investigation looked at tens of thousands of art works in the House of Orange's collection. Officials have contacted the heirs of the original owner, who was not named, to arrange its return.

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.

An El Greco painting, one of several dozen from a collection of Old Masters previously belonging to a Viennese industrialist and seized by the Gestapo in Vienna in 1938, has been returned to the family of its former owner after a swift process of recovery, thanks to a cooperative dealer.

The painting, “Portrait of a Gentleman,” was known to have been sold to a dealer in New York in the 1950s, but attempts to reach him proved unsuccessful and the work was able to change hands several times over the next 60 years, before resurfacing again for sale in New York, the institutions that helped facilitate the recovery said.

A federal appeals court has given new life to a Holocaust survivor's claim that the University of Oklahoma is unjustly harboring a Camille Pissarro painting that the Nazis stole from her father during World War II.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan has directed a lower-court judge to consider whether the lawsuit she threw out should be transferred to Oklahoma, saying she has authority to do so.

The court's order Thursday came as the school found itself amid a racial controversy after video of fraternity students engaged in a racist chant spread across the Internet.

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.

Following the return of two Benin bronzes looted by British troops in 1897, officials in Nigeria have reiterated their call for the British Museum to relinquish its collection of bronzes and return them to their country of origin, the BBC reported.

During a trade mission to Benin in 1897, seven British officials were reportedly killed by the men of the Oba, the King of Benin. In retaliation, the British killed thousands and set the city on fire in what has been described as “the most brutal massacre of the colonial era." Following the attack, the King's palace was looted and more than 2,000 artworks and religious artifacts seized.