300 paintings worth millions discovered in Polish outhouse

From the Telegraph, UK: 300 paintings worth millions discovered in Polish outhouse
The paintings were found mixed up with junk and rubbish in a dirty two-storey concrete building in the bricklayer's garden near the north-western city of Szczecin.

Police said the mysterious collection included works of art from the Renaissance and German baroque periods, with the oldest painting dating back to 1532. They also discovered a lithograph by the Polish artist Jozef Czajkowski, which disappeared from a museum in Katowice during the war.

A local art expert quoted by the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza said while it was impossible to place an exact price on collection, he was sure it was worth "millions of euros".

The collection, having suffered from its 66 years in the outhouse, has now been moved to a museum in Szczecin.

"Many of the pictures are in a terrible condition and we're trying to identify them and find out where they came from," said Przmyslaw Kimon, spokesman for Szczecin police. "Some of them are Italian so we're in contact with the Italian authorities, and we are also working with Interpol."

But police admitted to being perplexed as to how the bricklayer, now charged with handling stolen art, came to possess the paintings. Their investigation has also been hindered by the fact that two strokes have left the man, known only as Antoni M. owing to reporting restrictions, unable to communicate.

Most theories revolve around the possibility that the bricklayer had somehow managed to get hold of a collection of looted art, abandoned in the chaotic last weeks of the Second World War as Germans put life before property in their efforts to escape the advancing Red Army.

During the war German forces indulged in looting on a massive scale in the occupied territories, stripping museums and private collections bare. While many pieces were recovered after the war others disappeared without trace, especially in eastern Europe, which suffered from widespread destruction and huge movements of refugees.

One theory goes that the bricklayer's house had once belonged to art dealer, and the dealer's art had stayed in the house after its owner disappeared.

Another possibility is that Antoni M. had discovered crates of looted art the Germans had failed to transport west before the end of the war.

Possessing an interest in art he decided to keep the paintings rather than turn them into the authorities.

He also decided to keep them out of public sight. Stashing them in hiding places in his outhouse, he made the building off-limits to even his closest family.

The news of the discovery was welcomed by Leszek Jodlinski, director of the Silesia Museum in Katowice, one of the museums stripped bare by the Nazis during the war, and the former home of the Czajkowski lithograph.

"For us the picture is beyond value priceless," he said. "When you lose everything it is so important to get something back." Mr Jodlinksi added that he was confident there were other works of art stolen from his museum amongst the bricklayer's paintings as it was unusual for collections to be broken up.

UK: The complicated legal issue of looted art

From the Telegraph: The complicated legal issue of looted art
When German tanks rolled into Poland in September 1939, from day one Nazi forces indulged in looting on massive and systematic scale. Poland alone lost an estimated 516,000 items, about 43 per cent of its cultural heritage.

Some of the plundering was designed to provide German museums back home with new collections. But other times the art was taken to furnish the private collections of leading Nazis. Herman Goring, the Luftwaffe chief, for example, amassed a huge collection of some 2,000 paintings of which 50 per cent were stolen.

Thousands of items disappeared in the war, never to be seen again. While some of the missing works were destroyed in the fighting there have long been rumours of secret stockpiles of looted art, hidden by the Germans as the Allies advanced.

Since the war countries like Poland have made strenuous efforts to recover their property, and while they have often been successful recovery can be a fraught procedure.

In some cases, especially for works that belonged to Jews murdered in the Holocaust, just who owned what can be legally difficult to prove. Along with the owners, the war also claimed ownership records leaving claimants with little more than family memories as evidence that a painting once belonged to them.

Sometimes it is the case the works of art were orphaned in the war. Without a claimant or a paper-trail pointing investigators in the right direction the works can remain without an owner, and even now some 100,000 items have never been returned to their rightful owner.

Further complicating the issue was the counter-looting practiced by the Red Army. Eager to exact revenge on Germany for their country's wartime suffering Soviet forces happily seized German property. The recovery of German works of art taken to Russia after the end of the war remains a sensitive and emotional subject.

10/26-28/2011, Lafayette College, PA: Nazi Plunder and Restitution

From Caldendar.Layfayette.edu. Lafayette Pennsylvania: Nazi Plunder and Restitution: Conference on Nazi-Looted Art at Lafayette College

When: Wednesday, October 26, 2011 - Friday, October 28, 2011Where: Various campus locationsPrice: FreeThe conference begins the evening of Wednesday, October 26 and concludes at 1:00 on Friday, October 28. The schedule:

Wednesday, 5:30 pm: Dinner with speakers and invited guests

Wednesday, 7 pm: Showing of “The Rape of Europa” followed by a discussion/lecture by Nicole Newnham, one of the movie’s producers/directors/writers

Thursday, noon: Brown bag lecture by Marc Masurovsky (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., and co-founder of Holocaust Art Restitution Project): “A Primer on Nazi/Fascist Cultural Plunder and the Never-Ending Quest for Justice in the Post-War Era”

Thursday, 3 pm : Lecture by Victoria Reed (Monica S. Sadler Curator for Provenance, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston): “Nazi-Era Provenance: The Museum’s Perspective and the Researcher’s Role”

Oct. 27, 4:15 pm: Keynote speech by Professor Jonathan Petropoulos (John V. Croul Professor of European History, Claremont McKenna College): “Nazi Art Plundering, Post-War Restitution, and the Restitution Field Going Forward”

Thursday, 5:30–7 pm: Dinner with speakers, faculty, and students.

Thursday, 7:30 pm: Lecture by Lucian Simmons (Worldwide Director of Provenance and Restitution at Sotheby’s, New York)

Friday, noon: Brown bag lunch lecture and discussion with Austrian Ambassador Hans Winkler (2011 Max Kade Distinguished Lecturer, sponsored by the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Max Kade Foundation): "Late Justice: Austria's efforts to deal with Nazi-looted art in public museums and collections"

Looted Nazi art records go online

From BBC News, 5 May 2011: Looted Nazi art records go online
Records about stolen artworks taken during World War II are to be placed on an international database so items can be traced.

It is hoped publishing the documents online will help families and historians find missing items seized by the Nazis.

The National Archives and the Commission for Looted Art have signed an agreement to provide the documents.

The files, dated between 1939 and 1961, feature inventories and images of art.

The records also include details about efforts to identify and recover the articles during and after World War II.

"By digitising and linking archival records online, researchers will be able to piece together the stories of what became of cultural objects," said Oliver Morley. chief executive and keeper of the National Archives.

Last year the Leopold museum in Austria agreed to pay a Jewish art dealer's estate $19m (£11.5m) for an Egon Schiele painting, Portrait of Wally, that the Nazis had stolen from her.

The museum has now announced it will sell another of the artist's works to pay off a loan it took out to cover the costs of a 12-year legal battle.

Nazi looted art returned to Jewish owners

Some more background on the "The Return of Tobias" painting found in a collectoin of paintings that Italy had loaned a Tallahassee museum.

From BBC News: Nazi looted art returned to Jewish owners
The Return of Tobias (1934), by Max Liebermann, is now in Berlin, where the artist's heirs reside.

Meanwhile, a separate painting has been impounded in the US, amid claims it was stolen from a Jewish family during World War II.

The baroque artwork, by Girolamo Romano, had been on loan from Italy.

Christ Carrying the Cross Dragged by a Rogue was one of 50 works lent by the Pinacoteca di Brera museum in Milan to the Mary Brogan Museum in Tallahassee, Florida.

The US Attorney's office has instructed the gallery to retain of the painting until ownership issues have been resolved by US and Italian investigators.

The work is currently on display at the Mary Brogan Museum of Art & Science in Tallahassee "My initial reaction was that this was an important opportunity for the Brogan museum to do the right thing and help the government determine the rightful ownership," said the museum's chief executive officer Chucha Barber.

The 16th century painting was purchased at an auction in Paris in 1914 by Gentili di Giuseppe. Following Di Giuseppe's death, the painting is believed to have been sold off by the French Vichy government in 1941 to pay off debts.

But members of Di Giuseppe's Jewish family, who fled the country because of the Nazi occupation, have said the sale was illegal.

Rightful return

Max Liebermann, who died in 1935 at the age of 88, was a prolific German painter who led the Berlin Secession.

James Snyder from the Israel Museum said Liebermann loaned his painting to the Jewish Museum in Berlin in the 1930s.

The work, along with many others, disappeared from the museum during World War II. Following the war, with authorities unable to discover to whom the painting belonged, it was given to the Israel Museum (then the Bezalel National Museum).

Recent research, however, revealed the rightful heirs were Liebermann's own family and it will now remain in Germany.

"The fact that Max Liebermann was a prominent German artist of his time and living in Berlin, coupled with the new research that enabled us to discover that this work belonged to him, adds particular poignancy to our being able to restore it to his heirs now," Mr Snyder said.

The Nazis stole an estimated 650,000 religious items and works of art from European Jews during World War II.

While much of the art been returned, a great deal remains in museums and private collections.

Art theft not going away any time soon

From the Observer & Eccentric: Art theft not going away any time soon

With the recent release of the independent documentary film, The Missing Piece: The Truth about the Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa, questions surrounding why someone would steal a priceless, and equally recognizable piece of art, often arise. Stolen from a wall in a gallery at the Louvre 100 years ago (Aug. 21, 1911), the whereabouts of this extraordinary painting remained unknown for two years.

According to Eric Gibson in his piece in the Wall Street Journal on Feb. 15, 2008, “One of the main factors determining a work of art's value on the open market ... is a legitimate provenance, or ownership history. What thieves rarely recognize is that once artworks have been stolen from a museum, they have no provenance. They can't be sold, so they're really worth nothing.”

Gibson proposes that instead, art theft “may be driven primarily by art's easy availability and its high social profile.” Gibson may be onto something since it has been estimated that art theft is a $3-5 billion worldwide business which continues to grow each year.

International agencies such as INTERPOL, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organizations) and ICOM (International Council of Museums) invest money, time and other resources every year to bring awareness to this problem. In addition, the FBI's Art Theft Program established a rapid deployment Art Crime Team in 2004. This team is composed of 13 special agents, each responsible for addressing art and cultural property crime cases in a specific geographic region.

So, if talk about thief of cultural property interests you, why not pick up Simon Houpt's Museum of the Missing: A History of Art Thief. If you enjoy the thrill of the hunt, Edward Dolnick's The Rescue Artist: The True Story of Art, Thieves and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece and Robert K. Wittman's Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World's Stolen Treasures are must reads. Both authors do a great job of putting you in the middle of the action, as these nonfiction books read almost like fiction.

Much has been written about the valuable art works stolen by the Nazis. Perhaps one of the best written books on this topic is Robert M. Edsel's The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History. Hector Feliciano's The Lost Museum: the Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World's Greatest Works of Art is also a title that will keep you riveted to your seat.

If fiction is more your style, Norm Charney's The Art Thief follows three art thefts in three cities as they are simultaneously investigated. Any true mystery lover shouldn't pass up Ian Pears‘ mystery series featuring art historian Jonathan Argyll and Flavia di Stefano of Rome's Art Theft Squad.

So whether the largest - and yet unresolved - art theft in history which took place at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990, or the stolen Post-Impressionist paintings from the Buhrle Collection in Zurich and followed by two Picasso's stolen just four days later from a Swiss exhibition near Zurich gets your blood running, there is no shortage of information available for you.

If you want to find out more about art theft or just want to peruse art books bursting with color plates from some of your favorite artists, stop by the library to relax and enjoy the world of art. Call (734) 326-6123 or stop by the library seven days a week or check out our website at westlandlibrary.org 24/7 or Facebook.

Florida museum may have Nazi-looted art

From SouthCarolina1670: Florida museum may have Nazi-looted art

Federal officials recently ordered the Mary Brogan Museum of Art & Science in Tallahassee, Fla., not to return one of 50 paintings on loan from a museum in Italy because it is believed to have been stolen by Nazis during World War II.

US authorities are working with the Brogan and the Italian government to resolve questions of ownership amid claims the work had been stolen from a Jewish family in World War II, according to The Associated Press.

The work in question is a 473-year-old painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Girolamo Romano titled Christ Carrying the Cross Dragged by a Rogue.

It was part of the 50-piece exhibit, Baroque Painting in Lombardy from Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan, which went up March 18 and was disassembled earlier this month.

It is believed that the Nazi-backed French Vichy government seized and sold the painting in question, along with more than 150 other works, in 1941 to pay off debts.

The work was purchased by Giuseppe Gentili on June 4, 1914, after it was put up for auction in Paris.

Gentili died in 1940 and his children fled to Canada, spending the duration of the war there and the US. Other family members, including Gentili’s sister, died in concentration camps. The surviving family now lives throughout Europe.

Gentili’s grandchildren have taken legal steps to find and reclaim works lost during the Nazi occupation. In 1999, an appeals court forced the Louvre to return five paintings to the Gentili family, according to the Tallahassee Democrat.

The Brogan’s Chief Executive Officer Chucha Barber first learned that the painting may have been stolen by Nazis when she was contacted by Pamela Marsh, the US Attorney for the Northern District of Florida, on July 21. Barber did not know how Marsh came to suspect the painting was tied to Nazi plunder, the Democrat reported.

Barber, working with a curator from the Pinacoteca museum, intends to put the Romano painting back on display as the Brogan continues a crucial fundraising campaign.

A little more than two months ago, the museum embarked on a five-month, $500,000 capital campaign needed to meet day-to-day expenses and payroll. The museum invested heavily to bring the Baroque exhibit to the Brogan.

“I see this as a teachable moment regarding the value of museums and museum objects,” Barber told the Tallahassee Democrat in an exclusive interview. “It’s also one family’s incredible story about the atrocities of the Holocaust.”

Barber did not know the appraised value for Romano’s painting, but said it was insured for about $2.5 million, according to the Democrat. A master appraiser from Christie’s in New York recently visited the Brogan to examine Christ Carrying the Cross, Barber said.

Untold millions of dollars’ worth of art, currency, jewelry, gold and other cultural artifacts were stolen by the Nazis throughout western Europe from 1933 to the end of World War II. Many objects have been recovered, and there are ongoing efforts to identify and return artworks such as the one at the Brogan.

Romano, also known as Girolamo Romani and simply Romanino, was an Italian High Renaissance artist who was born around 1485 and died around 1566.

Berlin's First Jewish Museum Pieced Back Together

From the The Hewish Daily Forward, The Arty Semite: Berlin's First Jewish Museum Pieced Back Together

As valuable as art can be, Karl Schwarz knew that life is much more precious. That is why he fled with his family to Tel Aviv from Berlin only months after opening the first Jewish museum in that city in January, 1933. Now, almost 80 years later, a portion of the art that Schwarz collected has been painstakingly reassembled and put on display on the same spot where his museum once stood.

The search for the art, looted and stashed away by the Nazis, has preoccupied Hermann Simon, director of the Centrum Judaicum (which stands where the museum once did, next to the New Synagogue on Oranienburgerstrasse) and his deputy, Chana Schuetz, for the past 30 years. Not all the components of the original collection, which included works by Max Liebermann, Marc Chagall, Lesser Ury, Moritz Oppenheim and Leonid Pasternak, have been located. The majority of those that have been recovered are on loan to the Centrum Judaicum for the show, which is titled “In Search of a Lost Collection.”

Although its director had escaped from Germany, the museum stayed open until Kristallnacht, in November 1938, when it was seized and sealed by the Nazis. In the years between Schulz’s departure and the museum’s closure it served as a refuge for Jewish artists who remained in the city.

After the war, more than 280 stolen paintings were discovered in a West Berlin vault, and made their way to art institutions like The Israel Museum in Jerusalem and the Skirball Center in Los Angeles. Others ended up in private hands in Poland, Israel and the U.S. Two were even found hanging in a retirement home in England.

One painting by Max Liebermann that was in The Israel Museum’s collection was found to have only been on loan to the museum in Berlin by the artist’s wife. After the show at the Centrum Judaicum is over, it will be restored to Liebermann’s family.

The largest-format works known to have been in the original collection have not yet turned up. Simon and Schuetz are hopeful that they will eventually be found, along with the silver Judaica and North African antiquities that were once among the holdings of the museum. “I don’t think these things have gone forever. They are somewhere, and we will find them,” Simon told Bloomberg News.

The reunited works of art will not be able to remain together; they will be returned to the museums and collections that have been their post-war homes by early 2011. “In Search of a Lost Collection” is showing at the Centrum Judaicum in Berlin until December 30.

From Indiana Daily Student: Gallery talks explores history of collection during WWII
On a weekend filled with the memory of contemporary loss, IU Art Museum took a moment to look at loss of the past. A gallery talk Sunday at the museum explored the history and role of art in World War II.

From “Degenerate Art” to “The Monuments Men: An Overview of Art in Nazi Germany,” the talk focused on the Nazi-driven looting of major works of modern art during the rise of the Third Reich.

The talk was presented by Jenny McComas, class of 1949, the head of the museum’s Nazi-Era Provenance Research Project and the curator of Western Art after 1800. She said she began her investigation by conducting research into the European works in museum’s collection and determining their ownership histories.

The main goal, she said, was to make sure the works had not been looted during World War II.

“In our provenance of ownership research, we’ve uncovered a lot of interesting stories about the works in our collection,” McComas said.

During the 45-minute gallery talk, she highlighted some of these histories and explained how art functioned within the Third Reich of Nazi Germany.

McComas said it is estimated that by the end of the war in 1945, 20 percent of the art in Europe had been displaced by being looted, destroyed, or lost during bombings. In the last decade, museums have taken great interest in determining the provenance of their works.

“I’m personally thrilled that the museum community is taking this task upon themselves,” McComas said. “I hope that by conducting our research, we can correct the wrongs that were perpetrated and deepen our understanding of the works in our own collection.”

Bloomington resident Misti Shaw said she feels the gallery exhibit is an enriching art experience as it relates to history.

“I think it’s important to study any art as it relates to its culture and politics,” Shaw said. “It puts art into a context that gives us a richer understanding of history.”

Ph.D. student Luke Wood said he enjoyed the exhibit because World War II plays such a large role in the collective cultural memory.

“Students are aware of the events and should therefore be interested,” Wood said.
The gallery talk was one part of “The Spoils of War: Art in Nazi Germany,” sponsored by Themester 2011: Making War, Making Peace, a semester-long program that explores the uses of art in Nazi Germany.

Themester 2011 also included a screening of the film “The Rape of Europa” at the IU Cinema Sunday to delve deeper into the history of the looting of art during the war.
More related events will follow throughout the semester, including the self-guided tour of exhibits in the Gallery of the Art of the Western World, located on the first floor of the museum.

The exhibit features 12 European paintings and sculptures with connections to World War II and includes a free gallery brochure that explains how the works survived the war and came to be part of the collection.

Ph.D. student Erin Corker said she felt the “Art in Nazi Germany” exhibit is important for students because it’s a learning experience apart from school.

“This is an important opportunity to learn outside the classroom or seminars,” Corker said. “It’s a part of learning outside of the University.”

Heirs Get a New Shot to Claim Nazi-Looted Art

From Courthouse News: Heirs Get a New Shot to Claim Nazi-Looted Art
WASHINGTON (CN) - The heirs of a Jewish baron can sue Hungary and its state-run agencies in hopes of reclaiming their family's art collection, which they claim was seized by the Nazis in World War II, a federal judge ruled.

Before his death in 1934, Baron Mor Lipot Herzog, a Budapest banker, had amassed one of Europe's greatest and largest private collections of art in Hungary. At the start of the Hungarian Holocaust began in 1944 and 1945, Herzog's family left the country to escape certain death.

While Hungary had ordered Jews to register their art collection with the government, the Herzogs hid their paintings and sculptures in the cellar of a family-owned factory. Nevertheless, they government and Nazi collaborators discovered the hidden cache and seized it as trophies for Germany and the Museum of Fine Arts.

David de Csepel, a U.S. citizen, Angela and Alice Herzog, Italian citizens, sued to recover their estimated 40 pieces of art, including masterworks by El Greco, Francisco de Zurbaran and Lucas Cranach the Elder.

They are suing Hungary and its state-run agencies, Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery, Museum of Applied Arts and Budapest University of Technology and Economics. Though Hungary was supposed to return the art collection after the war ended, the Herzogs say Hungary instead bullied and harassed the heirs, denying them export permits and threatening them with jail time, until they surrendered their heirlooms to Hungary and its museums.

The Republic of Hungary argues that there are several reasons this case should not be tried in the United States, such as the statute of limitations and lack of jurisdiction under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. It also claims that it cured any violations with an $18.9 million settlement struck with the U.S. in 1973 that paid Hungarian citizens for their damages during the war, and with its settlement one of the heirs in 1959.

U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Hevelle dismissed the FSIA argument, saying the heir's complaints are "substantial and non-frivolous" and that the Herzog collection "was taken without just compensation and for discriminatory purposes."

She added that the alleged German Nazi conspiracy acts were proof enough alone of such a violation, even if Hungary's involvement did not violate international law.

"There is a public interest in resolving issues, such as this one and that this court is familiar with the issues of law such as with this case and therefore finds the U.S. an appropriate forum for the case," the 46-page decision states, agreeing with the Herzogs that looting the Herzog art collection was a violation of international law.

Hungary's 1973 agreement with the U.S. did not apply to the Herzogs because the heirs were not considered to be American citizens when their collection was stolen in 1944, Hevelle said, noting the Herzogs' claim that Hungary seized their art after forcing them out of their country in 1944.

"It is clear, the government of Hungary thought otherwise and had de facto stripped her, Ms. Weiss de Csepel, and all Hungarian Jews of their citizenship rights," Hevelle said.

And the 1959 trial in Hungary does not apply to this case as this one involves more Herzog heirs, more Hungarian agencies and more art work, according to the court, which added the heir accepted only a partial payment of $169,827.

A final ruling on the statute of limitations is pending, but the complaint claimed facts that "if true, could support a finding that this action is timely." Hevelle said.

The plaintiffs are represented by Michael Shuster of Kasowitz Benson Torre & Friedman.

Art theft, from the 'Mona Lisa' to today

From the Los Angeles Times, August 20, 2011: Art theft, from the 'Mona Lisa' to today

One hundred years ago Sunday, an Italian handyman named Vincenzo Peruggia stole the world's most famous painting from the world's most famous museum. Peruggia slipped out of a closet inside the Louvre in which he had hidden overnight, removed the "Mona Lisa" from the wall and retreated to a service staircase. There he removed Leonardo da Vinci's renowned painting from its frame, wrapped it in a white sheet and descended the stairs. But when he reached the bottom of the stairs, he found the exit locked. He unscrewed the doorknob, but the door still would not open. Peruggia had to wait for a passing plumber to let him out. Peruggia left the Louvre and disappeared into the streets of early morning Paris.

Fifty years to the day after the "Mona Lisa" heist, a brazen thief stole Goya's "Portrait of the Duke of Wellington" from London's National Gallery. Someone had wormed his way into the gallery through an unlocked lavatory window 14 feet above the ground. The thief made off with a painting that had just been purchased by the British government, to prevent its loss to an American buyer, for the princely sum of £140,000. When it was stolen, police assumed that they were dealing with a highly skilled professional group of criminals until they got the first of many ransom notes.

The 100th and 50th anniversaries of these thefts, which share more than an anniversary, offer a good opportunity to consider how art crime has evolved in the last century.

When the firm for which Peruggia worked in Paris was hired by the Louvre to build protective cases for some of its prominent masterpieces, Peruggia hatched the plan to steal the world's most famous painting in order to return it to Italy.

The investigation was a marvel of ineptitude: The crime was solved only when the thief turned himself in. Nearly two years after the theft, Peruggia showed up in Florence with the stolen Leonardo, smuggled in the false bottom of a shipping trunk. He had hoped to give the "Mona Lisa" to the Uffizi museum. He did not specifically request any money, but he implied that he was a poor man and that some compensation would be welcome. After handing the painting over to the Uffizi, Peruggia was surprised to find himself under arrest.

Peruggia claimed throughout his trial that his only intention was to repatriate the "Mona Lisa," which he believed had been looted from Italy during the Napoleonic era (unlike much of the Louvre's Italian collection, it had not). Peruggia was given a short sentence, and the "Mona Lisa" was displayed in Italy to sellout crowds before it was returned to Paris.

Like the "Mona Lisa" theft, the Goya "Duke of Wellington" theft seems to have been ideologically motivated. London police received a series of bizarre ransom notes that promised the safe return of the painting in exchange for free television licenses for retired British citizens, who normally pay a tax per television set. The ransomer was outraged that the British government spent a fortune to retain some old painting, when its citizens had to pay to watch TV. The Goya would be returned, wrote the ransomer, if a charitable fund of equivalent value to the painting, £140,000, were established to pay for the television licenses. This was not a crime of profit but a crime about making a point.

The government made it clear that no ransom would be paid and no TV fund would be established. The theft seized the public imagination: In the 1962 James Bond film "Dr. No," Sean Connery does a double-take when he sees the stolen Goya hanging in Dr. No's lair. The thief corresponded with the police over the next three years, but the authorities still had no suspects. Then in 1965, a note arrived at the offices of the Daily Mirror newspaper with a luggage-check ticket for the Birmingham rail station. The ticket yielded a surprising package: the stolen Goya. As a note from the thief made clear, the painting had been returned as a sign of goodwill by the thief, who realized that his demands would not be met. He expressed remorse for what he described as a misguided action with noble intentions.

On July 19, 1965, a portly, disabled, retired cab driver walked into a police station to turn himself in. Kempton Bunton, a cuddly 252-pound grandfather, did not match the profile of a canny, professional art thief or a Goya-besotted art fan. Though it was never in doubt that Bunton wrote the ransom notes, many believe that he took the fall for someone else — someone who could more feasibly shimmy through a small lavatory window.

In court, Bunton was found not guilty of having stolen the painting, thanks to an antiquated legal clause that stated that if the jury believed that Bunton always intended to return the painting if his ransom negotiations failed (a belief that could be bolstered by the fact that he did return the painting), then he must be acquitted. The jury found Bunton guilty only of having stolen the painting's frame, which was never returned. He was gently scolded by the judge, who said, "Motives, even if they are good, cannot justify theft, and creeping into public galleries in order to extract pictures of value so that you can use them for your own purposes has got to be discouraged."

In 1968, as part of Britain's new Theft Act, Parliament made it expressly illegal to "remove without authority any object displayed or kept for display to the public in a building to which the public have access," thereby making Bunton's "borrowing" of the Goya a criminal offense. Ironically, television licenses were eventually revoked for old-age pensioners — satisfying, long after the fact, the unusual ransom demands of Kempton Bunton.

These two famous art thefts, the date of the latter chosen by the colorful Bunton for the theatricality of falling on the anniversary of the former, helped to mold the public perception of art theft as a crime of oddball characters who did not really harm anyone. It is true that some of the many famous art thefts of the period preceding World War II were of this ilk, involving quirky nonviolent thieves with gentlemanly aspirations.

But popular opinion on art theft has not caught up with reality. Since WWII, the majority of art thefts involve organized crime. The U.S. Department of Justice ranks art crime third, behind only the trade in illicit drugs and arms, in terms of the value of the contraband, and emphasize the link between stolen art, organized crime and even terrorists. Mohamed Atta, for example, tried to sell looted Afghan antiquities in Germany to fund the Sept. 11 attacks.

As it turns out, the lessons learned from two famous, and relatively harmless, art heists whose anniversaries fall tomorrow are still relevant today. The thief or thieves responsible for stealing the Rembrandt drawing from the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Laguna Niguel last weekend, and then depositing it days later on the doorstep of a church in Encino, probably came to the same conclusion as did Vincenzo Peruggia and Kempton Bunton. While it may not be too difficult to steal art, it can be very hard to cash in on the theft, especially with the eyes of the world watching.

Noah Charney is a founding director of the Italy-based Assn. for Research into Crimes Against Art. His latest book is "The Thefts of the Mona Lisa: On Stealing the World's Most Famous Painting," profits from which go to charity.

Four works by Otto Dix discovered

WWI Soldiers by Otto Dix

From AMA (Art Media Agency): Four works by Otto Dix discovered

Gallery owner Herbert Remmert has announced the recent discovery of four works by the famous German artist Otto Dix. The whole lot is estimated at approximately €800,000 and is composed of three watercolors and a study. The French newspaper Le Monde reports that the works are likely to be revealed in an exhibition before the end of the year.

The works belonged to Hans Koch, a friend of the artist, subsequently providing substantial proof of their authenticity. The pieces are dated back to the early 1920s, during which time Dix was settled in Düsseldorf. It was here that the pieces were found, at the home of Hans Koch’s descendants.

The three watercolors are entitled "Soubrette", "Nachten" and "Strich III" and the study is most likely a sketch of a painting belonging to the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin.

Otto Dix (from Wikipedia)
Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix (German pronunciation: [ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈhaɪnʁiç ˈɔto ˈdɪks]; 2 December 1891 – 25 July 1969) was a German painter and printmaker, noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of Weimar society and the brutality of war. Along with George Grosz, he is widely considered one of the most important artists of the Neue Sachlichkeit.

Biography
Early life and education
Otto Dix was born in Untermhaus, Germany, now a part of the city of Gera. The eldest son of Franz and Louise Dix, an iron foundry worker and a seamstress who had written poetry in her youth, he was exposed to art from an early age. The hours he spent in the studio of his cousin, Fritz Amann, who was a painter, were decisive in forming young Otto's ambition to be an artist; he received additional encouragement from his primary school teacher. Between 1906 and 1910, he served an apprenticeship with painter Carl Senff, and began painting his first landscapes. In 1910, he entered the Kunstgewerbeschule in Dresden (Academy of Applied Arts), where Richard Guhr was among his teachers.

World War I service
When the First World War erupted, Dix enthusiastically volunteered for the German Army. He was assigned to a field artillery regiment in Dresden. In the fall of 1915 he was assigned as a non-commissioned officer of a machine-gun unit in the Western front and took part in the Battle of the Somme. In November 1917, his unit was transferred to the Eastern front until the end of hostilities with Russia, and in February 1918 he was stationed in Flanders. Back in the western front, he fought in the German Spring offensive. He earned the Iron Cross (second class) and reached the rank of vizefeldwebel. In August of that year he was wounded in the neck, and shortly after he took pilot training lessons. He was discharged from service in December 1918.

Dix was profoundly affected by the sights of the war, and would later describe a recurring nightmare in which he crawled through destroyed houses. He represented his traumatic experiences in many subsequent works, including a portfolio of fifty etchings called Der Krieg, published in 1924.

Post-war artwork
At the end of 1918 Dix returned to Gera, but the next year he moved to Dresden, where he studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste. He became a founder of the Dresden Secession group in 1919, during a period when his work was passing through an expressionist phase. In 1920 he met George Grosz and, influenced by Dada, began incorporating collage elements into his works, some of which he exhibited in the first Dada Fair in Berlin. He also participated in the German Expressionists exhibition in Darmstadt that year.

In 1924 he joined the Berlin Secession; by this time he was developing an increasingly realistic style of painting that used thin glazes of oil paint over a tempera underpainting, in the manner of the old masters. His 1923 painting The Trench, which depicted dismembered and decomposed bodies of soldiers after a battle caused such a furor, the Wallraf-Richartz Museum hid the painting behind a curtain. In 1925 the then-mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer, cancelled the purchase of the painting and forced the director of the museum to resign.

Dix was a contributor to the Neue Sachlichkeit exhibition in Mannheim in 1925, which featured works by George Grosz, Max Beckmann, Heinrich Maria Davringhausen, Karl Hubbuch, Rudolf Schlichter, Georg Scholz and many others. Dix's work, like that of Grosz—his friend and fellow veteran—was extremely critical of contemporary German society and often dwelled on the act of Lustmord, or sexual murder. He drew attention to the bleaker side of life, unsparingly depicting prostitution, violence, old age and death.

Among his most famous paintings are the triptych Metropolis (1928), a scornful portrayal of depraved actions of Germany's Weimar Republic, where nonstop revelry was a way to deal with the wartime defeat and financial catastrophe, and the startling Portrait of the Journalist Sylvia von Harden (1926). His depictions of legless and disfigured veterans—a common sight on Berlin's streets in the 1920s—unveil the ugly side of war and illustrate their forgotten status within contemporary German society, a concept also developed in Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front.

World War II and the Nazis
When the Nazis came to power in Germany, they regarded Dix as a degenerate artist and had him sacked from his post as an art teacher at the Dresden Academy. He later moved to Lake Constance in the south west of Germany. Dix's paintings The Trench and War cripples were exhibited in the state-sponsored Munich 1937 exhibition of degenerate art, Entartete Kunst. They were later burned.

Dix, like all other practicing artists, was forced to join the Nazi government's Reich Chamber of Fine Arts (Reichskammer der bildenden Kuenste), a subdivision of Goebbels' Cultural Ministry (Reichskulturkammer). Membership was mandatory for all artists in the Reich. Dix had to promise to paint only inoffensive landscapes. He still painted an occasional allegorical painting that criticized Nazi ideals.

In 1939 he was arrested on a trumped-up charge of being involved in a plot against Hitler but was later released.

During World War II Dix was conscripted into the Volkssturm. He was captured by French troops at the end of the war and released in February 1946.

Later life and death
Dix eventually returned to Dresden. After the war most of his paintings were religious allegories or depictions of post-war suffering, including his 1948 Ecce homo with self-likeness behind barbed wire. Otto Dix died in Singen, Germany, in 1969.

Portraits of Jewish 'counterfeiters' donated

The main purpose of this blog is to talk about the art stolen by the Nazis from the peoples whom they conquered in WWII, and its subsequent fate, however, we'll cover other tangently related subjects here.

So:

From YNetNews.com: Portraits of Jewish 'counterfeiters' donated
Collection of 43 drawings by Felix Cytrin of his fellow Jewish prisoners handed over to Israel's Holocaust museum, where researchers can study them and where they will be exhibited for public viewing

He survived the Holocaust carrying the solemn portraits he drew of concentration camp prisoners who labored alongside him in one of the largest counterfeiting operations in history. For decades, those portraits have rarely been seen.

Now the collection of 43 drawings by Felix Cytrin of his fellow Jewish prisoners have been donated to Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial and museum, where researchers can study them and they will be exhibited for public viewing.

They are among the few images that exist of the young men who worked in an infamous secret Nazi operation to produce fake money, fictionalized in the Oscar-winning film "The Counterfeiters." Cytrin's heirs donated them to Yad Vashem at a special ceremony Thursday.

The works, most dated 1944 and 1945, were drawn on paper in pencil, charcoal and chalk.

"I think what is amazing when you look at these portraits is how beautiful these young men look," said Yehudit Shendar, the senior art curator for the Jerusalem-based museum, who came to New York City to receive the portraits.

"Probably Cytrin felt a need to beautify them. Why to beautify them? To give them back the individuality that they were robbed of during that time," she said.

The works will be integrated into Yad Vashem's art collection, and some will be exhibited in Jerusalem in December, along with other portraits created by artists imprisoned during World War II.

Shendar said they belonged to a genre of portraiture by imprisoned artists who sought to document the faces of people who were likely doomed.

The Nazis hand-picked from death camps a group of about 140 mostly skilled craftsmen at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp north of Berlin beginning in 1942, and gave them the dubious choice of creating bogus money for the Nazis or almost certain death. They were isolated away from the rest of the camp in barracks known as Block 19, surrounded by barbed wire.

Initially, the goal of "Operation Bernhard" (named for its lead SS officer, Bernhard Krueger) was to counterfeit millions of British pounds that could be air-dropped on England to undermine the Allied country's economy, but the plan did not work out. The bogus money was also used to finance Nazi espionage.

Lawrence Malkin, the author of "Krueger's Men: The Secret Nazi Counterfeit Plot and the Prisoners of Block 19," said in notes for a 2011 speech that at the height of production in 1943 and 1944, the prisoners were churning out 650,000 fake British notes a month. That amounted to $6 billion or $7 billion in 2011's money, Malkin wrote.

Cytrin was born in what is now Warsaw, Poland, in 1894, and his name appears on a list of "Operation Bernhard" inmates recovered from a lake in Austria, where the Nazis dumped documents about the plot, according to the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen.

A toolmaker and engraver, Cytrin was working in Leipzig when he was recruited to the secret plot and made chief of the engraving section, a critical job for the men working and living in Block 19.

Malkin called him one of the dozen or so people who "figured fairly importantly."

"There are people who stand out," he said. "And I'm sure that Cytrin stood out."

In early 1945, the counterfeiters were producing American dollars, but as the Red Army approached the operation was demobilized; the prisoners were sent with the equipment to Mauthausen concentration camp, then to a smaller camp in Redl-Zipf. The prisoners were then taken to Ebensee, to be killed.

But one day their Nazi guards disappeared, and Cytrin and the other members of "Operation Bernhard" were liberated in early May 1945.

Cytrin, who had a brother in the Bronx, came to the US with his wife in 1949 and found his way to New Jersey. His family said Cytrin's attempt to do portraiture professionally fizzled, so he turned to tool and dye-making. He died in 1971.

For many years after he had moved to the US, his family said he was suspicious of being watched by the government. The Associated Press has identified Army intelligence documents about Cytrin that remain classified at the National Archives in College Park, Md.

At the ceremony on Thursday, Marcia Friday, who was then married to Cytrin's grandson, said that about 25 years ago she discovered the disintegrating portraits in a cardboard portfolio at the family home in Pennsylvania.

Speaking at the Manhattan offices of the American Society for Yad Vashem, a US organization that supports the Israeli memorial's

"He was able to capture in each of the men's eyes an emotion that is below the external expressions in their faces," she said. "I think the emotions range from numbness to fear to terror."