They are paintings, literary archives or a tapestry of an English factory. These works were stolen from a collector or directly from the artist or recognized of doubtful origin decades later to finally be returned to the rights holders. They are the subjects of the six episodes of the podcast «À la trace» directed by Léa Veinstein for the Ministry of Culture, one of the the Year of the Documentary 2023 launched last January.
To trace the history of these works of art, it took the combined work of the Mission to search for and restore cultural property stolen between 1933 and 1945, curators of museums, researchers of origin and even the descendants of artists or collectors. A look back at these long-term investigations, through the voice of one of those who helped lift the mystery.
Episode 1: Across the Board
What happened between 1938, the date indicated on a label on the reverse of Max Pechstein’s painting, and 1966, when the work was found in the basement of the Palais de Tokyo? The enigma has not yet been fully solved despite the insistent research of Didier Schulmann, former curator at the National Museum of Modern Art. « We don’t know how he got here, it’s a series of mysteries. We’re just doing a hypothetical reconstruction to find out where this painting went. However, the curator went back on many tracks, following in the footsteps of Hugo Simon, a German Jewish banker, art collector, close to the expressionist artists of the time.
The shadows remain, as the canvas does not appear in any document. Nor in the list of works sold during the London exhibition at which Naked in a landscape was to appear in 1938. Nor in the list of works stolen by the Nazis in the apartment of Hugo Simon, in a mansion rue de Grenelle in Paris. No archive of the auction of works of art organized after the dissolution of the Bank of Algeria, owner of the hotel where the painting would have remained. Finally, no written record of a curator’s telephone conversation with Sonia Delaunay, some of whose drawings were also found at the Palais de Tokyo with Pechstein’s painting and during which she explained the progress of her works, A conversation that could have turned back the clock…
After its discovery, the painting entered the collections of the National Museum of Modern Art, before an investigation opened in 2005 on its doubtful origin. It was finally returned in 2021 to the great-grandson of Hugo Simon. Didier Schulmann continues to look for answers. “ What interests me is to expose the cowardice and complicity that accompanied the persecution and that survived long after the war. »
Nudes dyears a landscape of Max Pechstein, stolen from Hugo Simon
Episode 2: The Shadow of the Klimt
On the other hand, a goldsmith and then artistic director of the Ateliers viennois in the 1920s, close to Nora Stiasny, the heir of this Roses under the trees of Klimt who was deported and murdered in 1942. On the other hand, a Nazi militant who did not hesitate to exert psychological pressure to buy the painting for less than 400 reichsmark, more than twelve times less than its estimated price.
These two sides are those of Philipp Häusler and they will cross in the years 2010. At the time, Roses under the trees is exposed at the Musée d'Orsay which purchased it in 1980 during its foreshadowing period. “ At the time, we tried to enrich our foreign collections with artists who matter in the history of art ”, says Emmanuel Coquery, General Heritage Curator at the museum.
In 2001, Apple II, gift of Gustav Ucicky, illegitimate son of Klimt also close to the Nazis, is returned to the rights of Nora Stiasny by the Belvedere Museum. But in 2017, a turnaround. New research and documents will reveal «according to a high probability» that the real stolen painting was actually the one exhibited in Orsay. This high probability turned into ' inner conviction ” for Emmanuel Coquery. “ We studied all the hypotheses but we concluded that it would have required a second table by Nora Stiasny that would never have been identified, which was a tiny probability. All the clues converged. »
The Musée d'Orsay and the Ministry of Culture have therefore decided to restore the painting. But once it entered the national collections, it could not leave without a law. It was first voted on in Parliament last year. “ It was an eminently political decision, confides Emmanuel Coquery. It was also defended by all parties and voted unanimously. »
Rose bushs under the trees of Gustav Klimt, stolen from Nora Stiasny
Episode 3: Unknown at this address
It is the story of an upheaval, then a appeasement. Since 2013, Marion Bursaux has been researching her family history, tinged with secrets and unspoken. Some of these questions will find an answer in 2018, when she is contacted by a team of genealogists: Marion Bursaux is the great-granddaughter of the sister of Mathilde Javal, herself daughter of Émile, the buyer of two still lifes of the XVIIe century stolen by the Germans in Paris during the Occupation and exhibited at the Louvre Museum. Like 47 others, she was recognized as the copyright holder of these works. “ It was for me the recognition that what I was looking for on the violence suffered by my family was there, concrete. »
Marion Bursaux had little knowledge of her past. “ I had found a number of things that did not go very far. However, I understood that members of my family had gone to '” she says. Through these two paintings, the puzzle has gradually developed. “ This recognition of the state gave me the opportunity to return to my family and find my ancestors. It took me ten years for them to become as familiar as if I had met them. »
The two still lifes also allowed her to form a «small nucleus» of cousins that she had never known existed before. With them, she went to the Louvre last year to view the paintings for the first time. “ We were gathered around something that belonged to a common ancestor. This story is not only mine, but also that of people who are also doing their research. This process is a way to reclaim one’s history and identity. »
Ham still life of Floris van Schooten and Food, fruit and glasses on a table from Pieter Binoit to Emile Javal
Episode 4: The Seven Differences
It is the story of a few details that make all the difference between two copies of a tapestry of the Royal Manufacture of Mortlake, allegory of smell. One of them belonged to the Drey family, an influential Jewish family from Munich in the 1930s, who were forced to sell his works of art in 1936. « The persecution laws put in place by the Nazis imposed so many taxes on the Drey that they were forced to sell them at a lower price than the market '' explains Elsa Vernier-Lopin, from the mission to search for and return cultural property stolen between 1933 and 1945.
This tapestry was bought in 1994 by the Labenche museum in Brive-la-Gaillarde and spotted in 2016 by the heirs. The mission comes into play in 2019 to answer a question: how to ensure that the tapestry exhibited in Brive is the one that belonged to the family? « We were lucky to have several photos of the tapestries in color and black and white, which is rare '' continued Elsa Vernier-Lopin. 'The mission is going to embark on a game of seven mistakes. ' Some iconographic motifs were different like a fruit basket. There were also differences in the material state of the work: on one of the tapestries, the monkeys were retightened and this can be seen because there is a clearer halo in this area "All these differences will make it possible to establish that the tapestry of the Labenche Museum is indeed that of the Drey family," said Elsa Vernier-Lopin.
The heirs and the museum decide to agree: the work will remain in Brive who buys the tapestry. It is now on display at the Labenche Museum, which reopened last February, with explanatory panels on the origin and spoliation of the work.
Smell, Royal Mortlake Manufactory, Drey Family Stolen Tapestry
Episode 5: Letters Twice Stolen
Letters by Matisse, Rostand, Colette, poems by Apollinaire, drawings by Picabia, but also press articles and manuscripts. All these documents are part of the rich collection of Michel Georges-Michel, artist, journalist and social columnist very introduced in the artistic and cultural milieu of the early XXe century.
These personal archives were stored in the apartment that the writer, aware of the dangers he would incur as a Jew, fled during the Second World War to the United States. These documents were looted by the Germans and then confiscated by the Soviets who will keep them until the 2000s before they are returned to France and stored in the cellars of the SGDL, the Society of People of Letters. This represents about forty boxes with those belonging to another person whose trace we have not found "recalls Emmanuelle Favier, a member of the SGDL. In 2019, she looked more specifically at these documents. At that time, she prepared a book that evoked these stories of plunder and learned of the existence of this fund, which she eventually accessed. “ The object itself is quite fabulous with Cyrillic characters, she describes. The boxes are damaged but the documents are in good condition despite its century of existence and the path traveled. »
The author will then act as an intermediary between the SGDL and the Ministry of Culture and will participate in the restitution of the archives to the rights holders, in June 2020. « It is an absolutely moving moment because when you are a writer, you always ask yourself questions about meaning, your role in society. When you participate in a restitution, it is a moment of emotion and anchor in the real. »
Literary and personal archives stolen from Michel Georges-Michel
Episode 6: The Surviving Paintings
After the war and just before his death in 1946, Fédor Löwenstein probably brushed unknowingly his paintings, stored in Paris. “ He never knew they were missing, must have thought they were destroyed and therefore never applied to recover them Florence Saragoza, now curator of heritage at the National Museum and Chateau de Pau, explains.
At the time at the DRAC Nouvelle-Aquitaine, she conducted research on all the works MNR (National Museums Recovery) present in the museums of the territory, at the time between free zone and occupied zone. She takes a closer look at three paintings by Fédor Löwenstein, an unknown artist whose style oscillates between cubism and abstraction. “ He was one of those artists who came from Eastern Europe to participate in the artistic influence of Paris during the interwar period. He was particularly serious in the entourage of André Lhote. »
In 1939, he sent these three paintings by boat for an exhibition in New York via the port of Bordeaux. They would never go to sea. Worse, they will go back to Paris for the museum of the Jeu de Paume and its «room of the martyrs» intended for the works considered not worthy of interest by the Germans. « They will even be marked with a red cross, like a student who would have returned a bad copy. The Nazi regime condemned art that tended towards abstraction and paintings that did not meet their canons of beauty and colour. »
The joint research of the National Museum of Modern Art and DRAC Nouvelle Aquitaine will lead to an exhibition of his works at Museum of Fine Arts of Bordeaux. The city was concerned by the collaboration and this museum was particularly instrumental, continues Florence Saragoza. Other works have been blocked at the port, some have been identified on the spot, others have gone to wine residences, resorts of great collectors. »
Les Peupliers, Trees and Composition by Fédor Löwenstein spoliés to the artist
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