Art Theft And Looting During World War II
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Art Theft And Looting During World War II
Art theft and looting occurred on a massive scale during World War II. It originated with the policies of the Axis countries, primarily Nazi Germany and Japan, which systematically looted occupied territories. Near the end of the war the Soviet Union, in turn, began looting reclaimed and occupied territories. "The grand scale of looted artwork by the Nazis has resulted in the loss of many pieces being scattered across the world." (Minyard, 2007) Although the looting of "cultural heritage" of the German people and private collectors was not permitted in the 1945 agreement of Yalta, following the defeat of Germany by the Allied forces the following goods disappeared: three truckloads of precious art, which was listed in a confiscated list by the US forces (in the mine Merker in Thuringia), and one trainload of 20 wagons loaded with artwork and jewels from Hungary (named the "gold train"). According to a 2001 ''Der Spiegel'' article, the artwork is suspected to be in the US and has nev ...
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Art Theft
Art theft, sometimes called artnapping, is the stealing of paintings, sculptures, or other forms of visual art from galleries, museums or other public and private locations. Stolen art is often resold or used by criminals as collateral to secure loans. Only a small percentage of stolen art is recovered—an estimated 10%. Many nations operate police squads to investigate art theft and illegal trade in stolen art and antiquities. Some famous art theft cases include the robbery of the ''Mona Lisa'' from the Louvre in 1911 by employee Vincenzo Peruggia. Another was theft of ''The Scream'', stolen from the Munch Museum in 2004, but recovered in 2006. The largest-value art theft occurred at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, when 13 works, worth a combined $500 million were stolen in 1990. The case remains unsolved. Individual theft Many thieves are motivated by the fact that valuable art pieces are worth millions of dollars and weigh only a few kilograms at most. ...
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Theft Of Medieval Art From Quedlinburg
The theft of medieval art from Quedlinburg was perpetrated by United States Army Lieutenant Joe T. Meador in the days prior to the end of World War II in Europe. Precious church objects stored near Quedlinburg, Germany, were found by the U.S. Army. They were placed under guard, but eight extremely valuable objects went missing, including a 9th-century illuminated manuscript gospel book, the ''Samuhel Evangeliar'' (''English'': Samuhel Gospel), and a printed evangeliary (book of gospel readings for services) dating to 1513 (the ''Evangelistar aus St. Wiperti''), both with jewelled book-covers, as well as reliquaries, an ivory liturgical comb, a perfume-flask made out of rock crystal and other irreplaceable artifacts of historical importance. The most famous illuminated manuscript associated with the town, the 5th-century Quedlinburg Itala fragment, once in the church, had been moved to a museum in Berlin and was not stolen. The missing artifacts started resurfacing in 1987. After v ...
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Mánes Union Of Fine Arts
The Mánes Association of Fine Artists ( or ''S.V.U.''; commonly abbreviated as ''Manes'') was an artists' association and exhibition society founded in 1887 in Prague and named after painter Josef Mánes. The Manes was significant for its international exhibitions before and after World War I that encouraged interaction between Czech artists and the foreign avant-garde. It played an important role in the development of Czech Cubism and Rondocubism. Between 1928 and 1930, Manes built a complex with a restaurant, club, showroom and offices at the site of the Štítkovský Mill and water tower on the Vltava. The architect of the 1928 Manes pavilion was member . The union was liquidated under the Communists and was revived after the Velvet Revolution in 1990. Its headquarters became the Diamond House in Prague, itself a landmark of cubist architecture. Formative years (1885–1899) ''Svaz výtvarných umělců Mánes'' ("Association of Fine Artists Mánes") was established in ...
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En Canot
is a Cubism, Cubist oil painting created by Jean Metzinger in 1913. The work is referred to in various publications as , , , , ''In the Canoe'', ''The Boat'', ''On the Beach'', , , and . The painting was exhibited in Paris at the 1913 Salon d'Automne. The following year it was shown at '', 45th Exhibition of Mánes Union of Fine Arts, SVU Mánes'' in Prague, February–March 1914 (a collection of works assembled by Alexandre Mercereau). This "Survey of Modern Art" was one of the last prewar exhibitions in Prague. was exhibited again, in July of the same year, at the , Berlin. The painting was acquired from Herwarth Walden in 1916 by Georg Muche at . was exhibited in the , National Gallery (Berlin), National Gallery, Berlin, 1930, where it had been housed since 1927. The work was acquired by the National Gallery in 1936 (on deposit by the ), where it was placed on display in Room 5. It was later confiscated by the Nazism, Nazis around 1936, displayed at the Degenerate Art Exhib ...
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Jean Metzinger
Jean Dominique Antony Metzinger (; 24 June 1883 – 3 November 1956) was a major 20th-century French painter, theorist, writer, critic and poet, who along with Albert Gleizes wrote the first theoretical work on Cubism. His earliest works, from 1900 to 1904, were influenced by the neo-Impressionism of Georges Seurat and Henri-Edmond Cross. Between 1904 and 1907 Metzinger worked in the Divisionist and Fauvist styles with a strong Paul Cézanne, Cézannian component, leading to some of the first Proto-Cubism, proto-Cubist works. From 1908 Metzinger experimented with the faceting of form, a style that would soon become known as Cubism. His early involvement in Cubism saw him both as an influential artist and an important theorist of the movement. The idea of moving around an object in order to see it from different view-points is treated, for the first time, in Metzinger's ''Note sur la Peinture'', published in 1910.Jean Metzinger, October–November 1910, "Note sur la peinture" Pan: ...
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List Of Most Expensive Paintings
This is a list of the highest known prices paid for paintings. The current record price is approximately US$450.3 million (which includes commission), paid for Leonardo da Vinci's ''Salvator Mundi'' (). The painting was sold in November 2017, through the auction house Christie's in New York. Background The most famous paintings, especially old master works done before 1803, are generally owned or held at museums, for viewing by patrons. Since the museums rarely sell them, they are considered priceless. ''Guinness World Records'' lists Leonardo da Vinci's ''Mona Lisa'' as having the highest ever insurance value for a painting. On permanent display at the Louvre in Paris, the ''Mona Lisa'' was assessed at US$100 million on December 14, 1962. Taking inflation into account, the 1962 value would be around US$ million in . The earliest sale on the list below ('' Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers'' by Vincent van Gogh) is from March 1987; with a price of £24.75 million (£ million in cu ...
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Neue Galerie New York
The Neue Galerie New York (German language, German for "New Gallery") is a museum of early twentieth-century German and Austrian art and design located in the William Starr Miller House at 86th Street (Manhattan), 86th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City. Established in 2001, it is one of the most recent additions to New York City's famed Museum Mile, New York City, Museum Mile, which runs from 83rd to 105th streets on Fifth Avenue in the Upper East Side of Manhattan. History The museum was first conceived by two close friends: art dealer and museum exhibition organizer Serge Sabarsky, and entrepreneur, philanthropist, and art collector Ronald S. Lauder. The two men shared a passionate commitment to early twentieth-century German and Austrian art and design. They met in 1967, just before Sabarsky opened his Serge Sabarsky Gallery at 987 Madison Avenue. The gallery quickly earned a reputation as New York’s leading gallery for Austrian and German Expressionism, Expression ...
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Ronald Lauder
Ronald (Ron) Steven Lauder (born February 26, 1944) is an American businessman, billionaire, philanthropist, art collector, and political activist. He is the president of the World Jewish Congress since 2007. He and his brother, Leonard Lauder, are the sole heirs to the Estée Lauder cosmetics company, founded by their parents, Estée Lauder and Joseph Lauder, in 1946. According to ''Forbes'', Lauder has a net worth of $4.5 billion dollars as of Sept. 2022 (number 563 on Forbes' list of billionaires) Early life and education Lauder was born in New York City to a Jewish family, the son of Estée Lauder and Joseph Lauder, founders of Estée Lauder Companies. He is the younger brother of Leonard Lauder, chairman of the board of the Estée Lauder Companies. He attended the Bronx High School of Science and holds a bachelor's degree in International Business from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. He studied at the University of Paris, and receive ...
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Portrait Of Adele Bloch-Bauer I
''Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I'' (also called ''The Lady in Gold'' or ''The Woman in Gold'') is a painting by Gustav Klimt, completed between 1903 and 1907. The portrait was commissioned by the sitter's husband, , a Jewish banker and sugar producer. The painting was stolen by the Nazis in 1941 and displayed at the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere in Vienna. The portrait is the final and most fully representative work of Klimt's golden phase. It was the first of two depictions of Adele by Klimt—the second was completed in 1912; these were two of several works by the artist that the family owned. Adele died in 1925; her will asked that the artworks by Klimt be left to the Galerie Belvedere after Ferdinand's death, although these belonged to Ferdinand, not to Adele. Following the 1938 Anschluss of Austria by Nazi Germany, Ferdinand fled Vienna's increasingly anti-Jewish persecutions, and made his way to Switzerland, leaving behind much of his wealth, including his large a ...
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Gustav Klimt
Gustav Klimt (July 14, 1862 – February 6, 1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. Klimt is noted for his paintings, murals, sketches, and other objets d'art. Klimt's primary subject was the female body, and his works are marked by a frank eroticism. Amongst his figurative works, which include allegories and portraits, he painted landscapes. Among the artists of the Vienna Secession, Klimt was the most influenced by Japanese art and its methods. Early in his career, he was a successful painter of architectural decorations in a conventional manner. As he began to develop a more personal style, his work was the subject of controversy that culminated when the paintings he completed around 1900 for the ceiling of the Great Hall of the University of Vienna were criticized as pornographic. He subsequently accepted no more public commissions, but achieved a new success with the paintings of his "golden phase", ma ...
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Vincent Van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of which date from the last two years of his life. They include Trees and Undergrowth (Van Gogh series), landscapes, Still life paintings by Vincent van Gogh (Paris), still lifes, Portraits by Vincent van Gogh, portraits and Portraits of Vincent van Gogh, self-portraits, and are characterised by bold colours and dramatic, impulsive and expressive paintwork, brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. Not commercially successful, he struggled with severe depression and poverty, eventually leading to his suicide at age thirty-seven. Born into an upper-middle class family, Van Gogh drew as a child and was serious, quiet, and thoughtful. As a young man, he worked as an ar ...
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Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous member state of the European Union. Warsaw is the nation's capital and largest metropolis. Other major cities include Kraków, Wrocław, Łódź, Poznań, Gdańsk, and Szczecin. Poland has a temperate transitional climate and its territory traverses the Central European Plain, extending from Baltic Sea in the north to Sudeten and Carpathian Mountains in the south. The longest Polish river is the Vistula, and Poland's highest point is Mount Rysy, situated in the Tatra mountain range of the Carpathians. The country is bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukraine to the east, Slovakia and the Czech Republic to the south, and Germany to the west. It also shares maritime boundaries with Denmark and Sweden. ...
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