The German Museum is looking for sponsors to buy paintings by Ernst Kirchner

LUDWIGSHAFEN. The Wilhelm-Hack-Museum in Ludwigshafen, Germany, has announced the collection of donations in order to buy the painting by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and leave it in his collection. An agreement on this was reached with the heirs of Alfred Hess, whose family owned the canvas before the outbreak of World War II.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - Court of Paris (1913)

The painting “The Judgment of Paris” (The Judgment of Paris, 1913) is one of the key paintings in Kirchner’s work and a “jewel in the collection” of the William Hack Museum, the museum’s representative said in a statement.

An investigation into the fate of this painting showed that it was among those art objects that Thekla Hess, Alfred’s wife, was forced to transfer to the Art Association in Cologne in 1937. In 1939, she emigrated to the UK, joining her son Hans Hess. After World War II, the Arts Association in Cologne reported that the paintings transferred for conservation were destroyed. However, later it turned out that many of them were simply looted from the basement of the Association and hit the art market, including the “Court of Paris”, which was at the disposal of Wilhelm Hack, a businessman whose art collection led to the creation of a museum named after him in the city of Ludwigshafen.

Both parties agreed that the museum should either buy out the painting or return it to the heirs of the Hess family. The museum assured that they are likely to be able to collect the necessary amount and leave the painting in their collection. The federal Ministry of Culture, the chemical concern BASF SE and the Ernst von Siemens art foundation are ready to act as sponsors. The Hess family, who lived in Erfurt, owned one of the largest collections of German expressionism, which included about 4,000 works by artists such as Kirchner, Pechstein, Emil Nolde and Paul Klee. Note that another work by Kirchner Street Scene (Street Scene, 1913) was sold in 2006 for 38 million US dollars and today is part of the Neue Galerie collection in New York.

Anna Sidorova © Gallerix.ru