German authorities have recovered a cache of modernist paintings from behind a stack of tin cans in a Munich apartment. Many of the works were presumably looted by Nazis as examples of “degenerate” work. You can see one of the recovered Chagalls here.
The pieces were in the apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt, “son of a well-known Nazi-era art dealer.” That “-era” is doing a lot of work in that phrase, one suspects; according to the LAT article, Gurlitt père was “appointed by the Nazi regime” to deal with looted artwork, though the Guardian notes he had lost his post because he was half-Jewish. A complex story, perhaps.
The Guardian also suggests that Gurlitt fils got by over the years by occasionally selling off an unknown masterpiece.
Even very limited experience of the world of collectibles suggests it is full of these dark vortices, open secrets to the cognoscenti but unknown to the wider world, in which strange treasures abide.
I suppose we may be grateful the Nazis did not take the same preservationist attitude to degenerate physics they took to degenerate art. There’s rather a good description of the Nazi “anti-art” displays on Radio 4’s Front Row here.
Total tonnage 