(Q67201450)
Statements
Guggenheim to return Kirchner painting to heirs of Jewish dealer (English)
1 reference
Research showed that Flechtheim was the target of “particularly virulent anti-Semitic propaganda” before he fled to Switzerland, Paris and then London, where he died in 1937, the Guggenheim said. The painting was left in the possession of his niece, Rosi Hulisch, in Germany and then was acquired in 1938 by Kurt Feldhäusser, a member of the Nazi party, the statement said.Feldhäusser was killed in Germany in 1945 and left his collection to his mother, who consigned the painting to the Weyhe Gallery in New York in 1949, the foundation said. A collecting couple based in St Louis bought the work in 1952 and donated it to the Museum of Modern Art in 1956, it added. MoMA transferred it to the Guggenheim Foundation in 1988 in exchange for other works.“An essential part of the work of the Guggenheim Foundation is the ongoing investigation into the history and provenance of our collection, and we regard this responsibility with the greatest seriousness,” Richard D. Armstrong, director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, said in the statement. The agreement on the painting’s restitution was reached in cooperation with the Holocaust Claims Processing Office of the New York State Department of Financial Services, the foundation said. (English)