Some were believed to have been lost forever in the chaos and carnage of the Second World War. Others were not even known about before. They are among the 1,400 paintings found in the flat of recluse Cornelius Gurlitt by the German authorities.
Yesterday, as the art world was given a glimpse of some of the masterpieces, campaigners accused officials of ‘concealing stolen goods’ by refusing to publish details of the looted art, valued at £1billion.
The extraordinary cache, which includes unknown works by Marc Chagall, Otto Dix, Max Liebermann and Henri Matisse, was found when tax officials raided 80-year-old Gurlitt’s Munich apartment last year. But the authorities kept secret their discovery for 20 months, and are refusing to publish details of the works.
Officials also admitted they have not questioned Gurlitt, have no idea where he is and have no plans to issue an arrest warrant.
Ruediger Mahlo, of the pressure group Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany, accused the authorities of ‘what amounts morally to the concealing of stolen goods’.For some families missing art is the last personal effects of relatives murdered in the Holocaust. Anne Webber, of the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, said the response of the German authorities was ‘troubling’.
Yesterday, as the art world was given a glimpse of some of the masterpieces, campaigners accused officials of ‘concealing stolen goods’ by refusing to publish details of the looted art, valued at £1billion. The extraordinary cache, which includes unknown works by Marc Chagall, Otto Dix, Max Liebermann and Henri Matisse, was found when tax officials raided 80-year-old Gurlitt’s Munich apartment last year.
Siegfried Klöble, the head of the Munich customs office, revealed in a press conference on Tuesday that the previously unknown works included a self-portrait of Dix, thought to date to 1919, a portrait of a woman by Matisse and an allegorical work by Chagall.
The collection also contained works by Picasso, Auguste Renoir, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Max Beckmann, Max Liebermann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Carl Spitzweg, he added.Klöble stated that it was highly unlikely that Gurlitt was hiding any other paintings.
Gurlitt vanished after the paintings were confiscated, with police suspecting that he has access to almost unlimited funds. As well as selling The Lion Tamer, he sold off many of the paintings - works that wouldn't attract headlines - before the intervention of German customs officials.
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