Berne Museum of Fine Arts Unveils List of Part of Cornelius Gurlitt’s Collection Automatic translate

BERNE. The Museum of Fine Arts in the Swiss city of Bern (Kunstmuseum Bern) published the first two lists of 290 works of art included in the collection of Cornelius Gurlitt (Cornelius Gurlitt, 1932-2014), son of the German art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt (Hildebrand Gurlitt, 1895-1956). Cornelius Gurlitt died in May of this year and according to a testament promulgated by the German authorities, the collection goes into the ownership of the Museum of Bern, which, in turn, agreed to accept the inheritance.

In accordance with the agreement signed with the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany and the federal state of Bavaria, the collection of works in Gurlitt’s Munich apartment (also known as the Munich Warehouse) and in his house in the Austrian city of Salzburg will be classified in several stages, and the results each will be announced publicly.

From the lists that were published (195 units from Munich and 95 from Salzburg, respectively), it became clear that in Munich there was a wonderful collection of paintings, prints and watercolors by artists such as Tiepolo (Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, 1696-1770), Eugene Delacroix (Eugène Delacroix, 1798-1863), Honore Daumie (Honoré Daumie, 1808-1879), Jean-Francois Millet (1814-1875), Renoir (Auguste Renoir, 1841-1919), Max Liebermann, 1847-1935), Lovis Corinth (1858-1925), Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901), Emil Nolde (1867-1956), Kethe Kolwitz Käthe Kollwitz, 1867-1945), Karl Hofer (Karl Hofer, 1878-1955), Ernst Lud wig Kirchner (Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 1880-1938), Karl Schmidt-Rotlif (Karl Rottluff-Schmidt, 1884-1976), Marc Chagall (Marc Chagall, 1887-1985), Erich Heckel (Erich Heckel, 1883-1970), Oscar Kokoschka (Oscar Kokoschka, 1886-1980), Rudolf Grossman (Rudolf Großmann, 1882-1941), Heinrich Campendonk (Heinrich Campendonk, 1889-1957), Otto Dix (Otto Dix, 1891-1969) and others.

The collection also contains a very large number of works by Heinrich Gurlitt (Heinrich Louis Theodor Gurlitt, 1812-1897) - a good artist and grandfather Cornelius Gurlitt.

Among the works found in the house in Salzburg, the landscape of Jan Brueghel the Elder (Jan Brueghel the Elder, 1568-1625) and surreal canvases by Max Ernst (Max Ernst, 1891-1976) are of particular interest to researchers (and investigators). Experts from the Bern Museum also “announced” the paintings by Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot (Camille Corot, 1796-1875), Gustave Courbet (Gustave Courbet, 1819-1877), Edouard Manet (Edouard Manet, 1832-1883), and Claude Monet (Claude Monet, 1840-1926), Camille Pissarro (Camille Pissarro, 1830-1903), Aristide Maillol (Aristide Maillol, 1861-1944), Robert Huber (Hubert Robert, 1733-1808), the collection of small plastic by Auguste Rodin (Auguste Rodin, 1840-1917), examples of ancient Egyptian art, etc.

A month ago, on November 24, Christoph Sheublin, president of the Berne Museum of Fine Arts, announced that he had accepted a Gurlitt donation. This news was met with disapproval by many. President of the World Jewish Congress, billionaire Ronald S. Lauder (1944) said that if the collection was accepted by the museum, it would cause an “avalanche of lawsuits,” adding that if museum employees want to accept these works of art before establishing their origin, then going to harm themselves and their country, and the museum in Bern will become a museum of stolen works of art.

The owner of a large cosmetic company, Lauder is known as the long-time chairman of the board of directors of the New York MoMA Museum, and the owner of a huge collection of artworks, which, in particular, includes the famous painting "Adele Bloch-Bauer I" (1907) Gustav Klimt (Gustav Klimt, 1862-1918). A businessman bought a painting in June 2006 for $ 135 million from Maria Altman (Maria Altmann, 1916-2011), although, according to various sources, the Austrian state was ready to pay about $ 150 million to her for this work.

In addition to the actual resonant case of discovering the Gurlitt collection, this precedent, according to experts, will cause changes in Bavarian law, contributing to the restitution of works of art that were stolen by the Nazis during the Second World War.

The examination of establishing ownership of collection items continues. At the beginning of this year, with respect to more than 400 works, no evidence was found that they were the subject of illegal actions, after which the prosecutor’s office of the German city of Augsburg decided to return them to Cornelius Gurlitt “immediately”.

Anna Sidorova © Gallerix.ru