Art galleries in Germany and Switzerland are due to exhibit a priceless collection of paintings and sketches discovered two years ago in the home of a German recluse.
The managers of the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, and the Kunstmuseum Bern said their exhibitions would run simultaneously and would put the prized works in a “historically and scientifically contextualised framework”, in an attempt to shed light on the origin of many of the pieces, some of which were looted from their Jewish owners by the Nazis.
The discovery between 2012 and 2014 of the 1,500 works, including paintings by Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Max Liebermann, caused an international sensation. They were found in the Munich and Salzburg apartments of Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of a Nazi-era art dealer who was commissioned by Adolf Hitler to help seize works from museums and Jewish collectors.
Many of the works are believed to have been looted or have belonged to owners who were forced to sell them far below their market value.
Gurlitt left his collection to the Kunstmuseum in Bern on his death in 2014, aged 81.
A selection of the works will be shown this winter, in exhibitions the galleries say aim to “show the extensive range of works to a broad public, accompanied by a historical-scientific contextualisation”. The exhibitions will also highlight the fate of many art collectors who were persecuted during the Nazi era, many of whom were murdered in the gas chambers.
The Bonn exhibition will put particular emphasis on trying to discover further clues to various paintings with a dubious provenance. There are also plans for the exhibitions to tour around other parts of Europe.
The Gurlitt case came to public attention in 2013. In order to clarify the paintings’ provenance, the German government established a specially appointed taskforce. Its goal was to discover which of the works had been looted by the Nazis and to facilitate their return to their rightful owners and heirs. But of the 500 works suspected of having been looted, only five have been identified as stolen.
Last month it was announced that a coordination office at the Lost Art data bank in Magdeburg had been tasked with researching the provenance of a further 184 works.
But some have called the exhibition announcement premature while key questions as to who will inherit the collection or how many works were looted by the Nazis remain unresolved.
One of those to question the haste with which the hoard is being put on public display is Gurlitt’s cousin, Ute Werner, who legally challenged the will in which he left his collection to the Bern museum.
Werner argued that he had not been of sound enough mine when he compiled his will but her claim was rejected by a German judge. An appeal is still pending and observers say the collection remains in legal limbo until a final decision is made.
