Jewish Art Not Yet Returned to Owners Psot War
Matisses, Picassos, Cézannes. Nazi forces plundered scores of artistic treasures — and took an unfathomable number of human lives — during World War II and the Holocaust.
Works of art went on improbable paths before, during and after the war, withstanding harrowing conditions. They wound their way across national borders, through military depots and in and out of networks of collectors, looters, ideologues and restitution organizations.
Now, a new showroom at the Jewish Museum, "Afterlives: Recovering the Lost Stories of Looted Art" (running through January. nine), reveals the remarkable stories backside looted works by Paul Klee, Pierre Bonnard, Marc Chagall and many other artists.
"Nosotros wanted to do the show because [restitution] continues to be such an important topic," said co-curator Darsie Alexander. "So many of the collectors who lost their collections — and those who lost their lives — were Jewish."
And the breadth of the loss is staggering.
The new testify features 53 works of fine art, 80 Jewish ceremonial objects and a range of photographs and archival documents — a tiny fraction of all the art that was looted.
"There is no accounting for how much was lost and destroyed," said co-curator Sam Sackeroff, noting that at just 1 collecting point in Munich, Germany, operated by the Allies later on the war, more than a million objects were processed. "It adds up to the millions and millions."
"The Nazis were trying to destroy Jewish civilisation," Alexander added. "They were not successful. The notion of recovery — how these things were saved, non just how they were looted — is a great story."
Here, the fascinating, poignant real-life tales behind 6 works of art:
Henri Matisse, 'Girl in Yellowish and Blue With Guitar,' 1939; and 'Daisies,' 1939
The French mail-Impressionist painted both of these works a year before the Nazi occupation of Paris. Matisse's work was banned from German museums, and both paintings belonged to Paul Rosenberg, a renowned French-Jewish collector and dealer who represented many of the most famous and iconic mod artists of the 20th century, including Pablo Picasso and Fernand Léger, also as his personal friend Matisse.
Rosenberg stored these two works in his depository financial institution vault in Bordeaux until the Nazis ravaged it in 1940. He was forced to flee, making his way to America and surviving the war. "But he couldn't take the contents of his bank vault with him to America," said Sackeroff.
The paintings were taken to several Nazi storage facilities and wound up at the Jeu de Paume gallery, a massive building in Paris that the Nazis converted into their largest warehouse for looted art. Hitler's onetime No. 2, Hermann Göring, picked "Girl in Yellow and Blue With Guitar" for his own collection.
"You have these Nazi officials who are burnishing their own personal collections," said Sackeroff. "[It's] actually craven."
The paintings were returned to Rosenberg after the war concluded, and he afterward sold them separately. Simply, destined to be together, they somewhen reunited at the Fine art Institute of Chicago, which added "Daisies" to its drove in 1983 and "Daughter" in 2007.
Camille Pissarro, 'Minette,' 1872
This painting took an specially heartbreaking journeying. The French artist painted his young girl Jeanne-Rachel — nicknamed Minette and said to be his favorite child — when she was around 7 years old and gifted the painting to a friend. Two years subsequently, in 1874, she died tragically, and Pissarro took the slice back.
At the advent of World State of war Ii, the painting belonged in the drove of a prominent fellow member of the High german-Jewish community, Bruno Stahl, who stored the piece of work in his bank vault in Paris before fleeing to the US.
Information technology's ane of three paintings in the exhibition — forth with Cézanne'south "Bather and Rocks" and Picasso's "Grouping of Characters" — that were recovered from the aforementioned Nazi railroad train in Baronial 1944. It was collector Rosenberg'south son, Lt. Alexandre Rosenberg of the Complimentary French forces, who intercepted the train. He believed in that location were hostages on board, only to discover boxcars total of art.
Otto Freundlich, 'The Unity of Life and Death,' 1938
On loan from the MoMA is this colorful, abstruse oil painting by Freundlich, a Shine-born Jewish artist noted for his innovative way with lines and shapes but held up by the Nazis as a symbol of "degenerate fine art."
"One of his works [the sculpture 'Big Head (The New Man)'] was on the cover of the [catalogue] of the 'Degenerate Art' exhibition in Munich that the Nazis organized," said Alexander. "He was in a very precarious fourth dimension in his life, existence Jewish and being singled out as degenerate. He and his wife were very afraid of beingness deported."
The couple hid in a small town in the Pyrenees from 1940 to 1943, but Freundlich was eventually arrested and deported to the Lublin-Majdanek concentration camp in Poland. He was killed the day he arrived in 1943 at age 64.
Much of the artwork featured in "Degenerate Art" was subsequently destroyed past the Nazis — including Freundlich'south "Large Caput," last seen in 1941.
Still, "The Unity of Life and Death" survived. Though not much is known about the trajectory of the painting in the immediate backwash of the war, it was once in the possession of Peggy Guggenheim in Italian republic, among other collectors.
Franz Marc, 'The Big Bluish Horses,' 1911; and Max Pechstein, 'Nudes in a Landscape,' 1912
Both works were included in a groundbreaking anti-Hitler exhibition at London's New Burlington Galleries in 1938 that sought to counter the Nazi'southward "Degenerate Art" show in Munich a year prior. "It was an exhibition of German expressionist fine art that's much more reverent and celebratory," explained Sackeroff. While they hung on the same wall in London, they took very different paths later on the show.
"Horses" was spared the tumult of the state of war and traveled to America every bit part of an exhibit before beingness purchased by a museum. "Landscape" met a more than complicated fate. Later on the show, information technology was returned to its rightful owner, a German-Jewish broker and avid fine art collector named Hugo Simon. But the painting was believed to exist looted when his Paris apartment was ransacked by the Nazis years later.
"Landscape" had a very public moment earlier this summer, when the French government returned the work to Simon'south heirs. The French Government minister of Culture Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin described the restitution every bit "the return of a family story, a reunion with a memory, a victory for life."
Now, some 80 years on, they're both on the aforementioned wall once again, this time in New York. "They had these radically diverging lives, and at present hither they are, hanging side past side," said Sackeroff.
Source: https://nypost.com/2021/08/20/jewish-museum-exhibit-shows-art-looted-during-world-war-ii/
0 Response to "Jewish Art Not Yet Returned to Owners Psot War"
Post a Comment