France will return a painting by Kulim to a Jewish family, which he had to sell before the war

The return of the painting to its original owners was announced on Monday by the Paris Museum d’Orsay. Currently the work is of the National Art Collection. However, according to Culture Minister Roslane Bechel, the government will soon begin a legal process, which will allow the transfer of the original family to private ownership. French media gave information about this.

It is “the only painting by the painter Gustave Klimt owned by France.”, The minister emphasized in a press conference of the Ministry of Culture.

Gustav Klimt was an Austrian painter who was a native of Bomgarten near Vienna, now part of the Pingal district of Vienna. His father came from Travis near Litomice. He is an important symbol artist who was part of the Viennese Art Nouveau movement. He is known for his paintings, murals and sketches.

Gustav Klimt painted the work in 1905, and has been exhibited at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris since 1980. “Only in recent years has it become clear who exactly the painting was,” the minister said. This forced Nora Stisna’s descendants to request the restoration of the painting in late 2019.

The image Pink bushes under trees It originally belonged to an Austrian Jewish family, which was forced to sell it in 1938. Until his death in 1980, a businessman sympathetic to Nazism owned the painting. It was then purchased by the Paris Museum d’Orsay. At that time, according to the minister, his past was not known.

In 1942 Nora Stasi was sent to Poland, where she died that year.

“Image Pink bushes under trees He said on Twitter that Sick is trying to make these witnesses disappear. “The future restoration is symbolic of the crimes committed against the Zuckerland and Stiana families, as well as the proper consideration for the property they own,” he said.

The same destiny of painting and works of art is far from unique. The Nazi regime removed a large number of works discovered by the Allies at the end of the war. At Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria alone, there were over 21,000 works of art, which literally made a list of thefts. Of these, there were only over 5,000 paintings. For example, the film deals with this topic Monuments () monuments Men) Since 2014.

However, collections of stolen works still appear decades after the end of the war. For example, in 2012, a collection of about 200 to 300 works was discovered in the house of Hildebrand Gurlitt’s son, Cornelius Gurlitt. It is believed that many of them were presented at the Nazi exhibition of so-called degenerate art. It features the works of Mark Chagall, Otto Dix, Henri Matisse and Renoir. In 2014 a number of works were also done in Nuremberg.

According to Brad Bradsher, author of the publication Documenting Nazi Plunder of European Art, There are still about 100 thousand items that have not been returned to their original owners. Most of them are common items, such as Chinese dishes, silver and gold. They believe that up to 20 percent of European art was stolen by the Nazis.

In 2000, the United States House of Representatives stated that between 1933 and 1945, the Nazi regime stole 600,000 works of art. Of this, 200 thousand were from Germany and Austria, 100 thousand from Western Europe and 300 thousand from Eastern Europe.

France is relatively illegally related to the subject of the restoration of works stolen by the Nazis. For example, in 2018, she returned a painting of August Renoir for the granddaughter of Alfred Weinberger, a Jewish art collector. According to the France Info Server, talk on the restoration of theft works started only in the 1990s. In December 1998, decades after the end of the war, 44 states agreed to try to return as many actions as possible.

Electronic databases help significantly in discovering the original owners. These are sometimes based on Nazi archives. Major US auction teams Christie and Sotheby’s have been working on the subject since the 1990s. He tries to find the master of all art objects. Lucian Simmons, responsible for the restoration at Sotheby’s House, told France Info in 2018, “whether it is painting, carpet or chest of drawers.” According to him, however, it is not possible to reduce the risk of selling the stolen work. But large auction halls want to lead by example.

The outlook of each country is different in this regard. Germany protects such cases, for example, from the border.

According to lawyer Imke Gillen, the role of the auction hall is important and fundamental. “It can be assumed that many of these works are not in state collections, but privately owned. They only arise when the owners offer them for sale.” With the departure, such paintings appear more and more at auction.