Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers (1891–1978), born Sophie Schneider, was a German art historian, patron of the

avant-garde The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...

, author, and art collector.

Biography

Küppers, née Schneider, was born in Kiel, Germany in 1891, the daughter of Christian and Mathilde Schneiders. She studied art history at university where she met her first husband, Paul Erich Küppers, who was the artistic director of the Kestner Society in Germany.They had two children. After he died in the flu epidemic in 1922, Küppers, now a widow, met the Russian artist

El Lissitzky Lazar Markovich Lissitzky (russian: link=no, Ла́зарь Ма́ркович Лиси́цкий, ; – 30 December 1941), better known as El Lissitzky (russian: link=no, Эль Лиси́цкий; yi, על ליסיצקי), was a Russian artist ...

and married him. Klee-sumpflegende

In 1927 Küppers moved to the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

and collaborated on a number of large-scale exhibition projects with her second husband, artist and designer

. She later wrote ''El Lissitzky: Life, Letters, Texts'' (1967). Before moving to the Soviet Union she loaned some thirteen works, including a

Paul Klee Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented ...

painting, ''Swamp Legend'', to the Provinzial Museum in

Hanover Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...

. In 1937 the Nazis seized the loaned works from the museum as part of their "

degenerate art Degenerate art (german: Entartete Kunst was a term adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party in Germany to describe modern art. During the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, German modernist art, including many works of internationally renowned artists, ...

" campaign. The Nazis sold the works abroad for foreign currency, and the Küppers-Lissitzky collection was dispersed throughout the world. In 1944, three years after Lissitzky died, Küppers was deported as an enemy foreigner to Novosibirsk, where she lived for the next thirty-four years.

Claims for restitution for Nazi-looted art

After several changes of ownership, the Klee painting (''Swamp Legend'') ended up in Munich's Lenbachhaus Museum, where in 2015 it was under protracted legal action from the heirs of Lissitzky-Küppers for its restitution. An agreement was finally reached in 2017 for the Museum to retain the painting but for compensation (estimated at between €2–4 million, or $2.33–4.65 million) to be paid to the heirs of the original owner. In 2001 the Kiyomizu Sannenzka Museum in Kyoto, Japan restituted a watercolor entitled "Deserted Square of an Exotic Town", 1921, by

that had been stolen by the Nazis from Sophie Küppers-Lissitzky. In December 2021, the heirs of Piet Mondrian filed a lawsuit against the Philadelphia Museum of art for Composition with Blue, which the artist had consigned to Küppers-Lissitzky when it was seized by the Nazis.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kuppers, Sophie German art historians German art collectors Women art collectors German women writers 1891 births 1978 deaths Women art historians German women historians Jewish art collectors