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

avant-garde In the arts and literature, the term ''avant-garde'' ( meaning or ) identifies an experimental genre or work of art, and the artist who created it, which usually is aesthetically innovative, whilst initially being ideologically unacceptable ...

, 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 El Lissitzky (, born Lazar Markovich Lissitzky , ; – 30 December 1941), was a Soviet Jewish artist, active as a painter, illustrator, designer, printmaker, photographer, and architect. He was an important figure of the Russian avant-garde, h ...

and married him. Klee-sumpflegende

In 1927 Küppers moved to the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

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).

Nazi seizure of art

Before moving to the Soviet Union she loaned some thirteen works, including Lyonel Feiniger's ''Die Brücke'', Piet Mondrian's ''Schilderij No. 2, "mit Blau, Gelb, Schwarz und verschiedenen hellgrauen und weißen Tönen''", Emil Filla's ''Stilllife'', Albert Gleizes's ''Landschaft bei Paris'', Wassily Kandinsky's ''Zwei schwarze Flecken'', and ''Improvisation Nr. 10'' and 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 wi ...

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

Hanover Hanover ( ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the States of Germany, German state of Lower Saxony. Its population of 535,932 (2021) makes it the List of cities in Germany by population, 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-l ...

. In 1937 the Nazis seized the loaned works from the museum as part of their " degenerate art" 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 Novosibirsk is the largest city and administrative centre of Novosibirsk Oblast and the Siberian Federal District in Russia. As of the 2021 Russian census, 2021 census, it had a population of 1,633,595, making it the most populous city in Siber ...

, 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 Sannenzaka 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:Lissitzky-Kuppers, Sophie German art historians German art collectors German women art collectors German women writers German women art historians Jewish art collectors 1891 births 1978 deaths