(Q19753812)

The Guggenheim relied on Donald E. Gordon’s catalogue raisonné of the work of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1968), which incorrectly stated that before Artillerymen had entered Feldhäusser’s collection, the painting had been owned by German collector Hermann Lange. New research shows that the painting was owned at that time by Flechtheim and not Lange. (English)

MoMA returns Nazi looted painting to rightful heirs

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https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=e6aef12e-f011-4690-a84c-67c75a5041eb

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Despite this connection, there were numerous obstacles in the way of establishing title to the painting. While the work originally entered MoMA as “Dunes at Fehmarn”, a title given to it by Berlin collector Kurt Feldhäusser, this was changed to “Sand Hills in Engadine” (1917-18) on the advice of Kirchner expert Donald Gordon.The jumbled provenance was compounded further by Kirchner’s catalogue raisonnée. It stated that the painting had been confiscated by the Nazis as “degenerate art” and had been in the collection of Essen’s Folkwang Museum. (English)

Guggenheim Museum Restitutes Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Painting to Heirs of Jewish Collector

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reference URL

http://web.archive.org/web/20210210142319/https://www.lootedart.com/news.php?r=TACQCI309401

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The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation announced today that it will restitute a painting by German Expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner to the heirs of the German Jewish art dealer Alfred Flechtheim (1878–1937).According to a statement issued by the museum, the Guggenheim Foundation spent two years investigating the provenance of Ludwig Kirchner’s Artillerymen, 1915. It learned that the work was in the possession of Flechtheim’s niece, Rosi Hulisch—who committed suicide before she was to be shipped to a concentration camp—when it was acquired by Kurt Feldhäusser, a member of the Nazi party, in 1938.After Feldhäusser was killed in Germany in 1945, his art collection was left to his mother, who consigned it to the Weyhe Gallery in New York a few years later. Morton D. May of St. Louis, Missouri, purchased Artillerymen in 1952 and donated it to the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1956. In 1988, the painting was transferred by MoMA to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in exchange for other works.The Guggeneheim claims that at the time it did not realize that the painting had a questionable history because it relied on Donald E. Gordon’s catalogue raisonné of Ludwig Kirchner’s work. Published in 1968, the catalogue incorrectly states that Artillerymen had been owned by German collector Hermann Lange before it entered Feldhäusser’s collection (English)