History News Network

art

Originally published 01/09/2014
Two Researchers Nominated to Investigate Trove of Nazi-Looted Art

Sophie Lillie and Agnes Peresztegi will serve on a panel chaired by Germany’s former deputy state minister for culture.

Originally published 12/30/2013
Nazi-looted art found in German parliament

The latest revelations come after the discovery of massive stash of looted art last month.

Originally published 11/17/2013
A Private Life Amid a Tainted Trove of Art

Meet Cornelius Gurlitt, the man who sat on a hoard of nearly 1,200 paintings seized by the Nazis.

Originally published 11/12/2013
Did the Nazis steal the Mona Lisa?

The extraordinary tale of the Nazi art thieves believed to have stashed the world's most famous painting in an alpine salt mine.

Originally published 09/10/2013
Painting stashed in attic for decades is identified as a Van Gogh

The 1888 landscape “Sunset at Montmajour" is apparently authentic.

Originally published 09/05/2013
Burrell tapestry: ‘Looted Nazi art’ found on Google

The tapestry is located in a major Scottish collection.

Originally published 08/15/2013
Lawyers hint at possible recovery of stolen Dutch art

BRUSSELS — Paintings worth tens of millions of dollars that were stolen last October from an art museum in the Netherlands have not been burned, and a Romanian gang behind the theft wants to cut an unspecified deal with the authorities so the artwork can be returned, lawyers for the defendants said on Tuesday as they went on trial in Romania.“Our clients want to tell where the paintings are, but they want to make a deal,” one of the lawyers, Radu Catalin Dancu, told reporters in Bucharest after a judge ordered the trial adjourned until next month. “We cannot say anything more than that.”

Originally published 08/08/2013
In search for stolen art, Romania finds traces of 19th-, 20th-century paint in ash from oven

BUCHAREST, Romania — A Romanian museum official says some of the paint pigments recovered from an oven of a woman whose son is charged with stealing seven multimillion-dollar paintings in the Netherlands contain chemicals from colors used in the 19th and 20th century, but aren’t commonly used anymore.Forensic scientists at Romania’s National History Museum examined ash from the stove of Olga Dogaru, whose son is the chief suspect in last year’s theft of paintings, which include a Matisse, a Picasso and a Monet.Authorities said Dogaru initially admitted burning the paintings to protect her son, but later denied it....

Originally published 06/06/2013
Piece of Berlin Wall up for auction

PARIS — Pieces of the Iron Curtain’s most iconic symbol, the Berlin Wall, are being put up for auction in Paris after being decorated by some of the world’s top artists.Slabs of the smooth concrete that divided East and West Berlin from 1961 until 1989 totaling 60 meters (66 yards) were given to artists including France’s Daniel Buren and the late Eduardo Chillida of Spain in the 1990s to be used as canvases.The result of their unique work is going under the hammer in central Paris on Thursday, under the title “Artists of Freedom.”...

Originally published 06/02/2013
Israeli national museum finds owner of painting that was looted by Nazis during Holocaust

JERUSALEM — Israel’s national museum has located the heir of the owner of a valuable impressionist painting that was stolen by the Nazis after a photo was discovered showing the work in the original owner’s home, the museum said Wednesday.Israel Museum spokeswoman Dena Scher said the museum purchased the “Garden in Wannsee” painting by the German-Jewish artist Max Liebermann from the owner’s heir after ownership was established. The painting is already on display in the museum and will stay there.The painting’s original owner, Max Cassirer, was a wealthy Berlin businessman from a family of art dealers. The impressionist painting, which depicts the garden of the artist’s summer residence, was confiscated by the Nazis in 1941 together with Cassirer’s other assets. After the war, it was given to a Jewish restitution organization and found its way to Israel....

Originally published 02/14/2013
Neolithic art is saved by lasers

MILITARY laser technology normally used to map out the battlefield is coming to the aid of crumbling prehistoric rock carvings in Teesdale.No one knows who created the carved rocks that appear in a number of spots on the fells of Teesdale – or why.The Neolithic art created 5,000 years ago bears a series of mysterious shapes, including concentric circles, interlocking rings and hollowed cups....

Originally published 02/05/2013
British Museum puts art from the Ice Age on show

The art world loves hype. Works are touted as the biggest, the rarest, the most expensive.Even in an age of superlatives, the British Museum has something special - the oldest known figurative art in the world.The artworks on display in the new exhibition "Ice Age Art" are so old that many are carved from the tusks of woolly mammoths.But it's not just their age that may surprise visitors. It's their artistry.These are artworks, not just prehistoric artifacts. Some of the sophisticated carvings, sculptures and drawings of people and animals look like something Pablo Picasso or Henry Moore might have created...

Originally published 01/29/2013
World's oldest portrait reveals the ice-age mind

Twenty-six thousand years ago in the Czech Republic, one of our ice-age ancestors selected a hunk of mammoth ivory and carved this enigmatic portrait of a woman - the oldest ever found. By looking at artefacts like this as works of art, rather than archaeological finds, a new exhibition at the British Museum in London hopes to help us see them and their creators with new eyes.Human ancestors date back millions of years, but the earliest evidence of the human mind producing symbolic imagery as a form of creative expression cannot be much older than 100,000 years. That evidence comes from Africa: this exhibition explores the later dawning of representative art in Europe and shows that even before the remarkable paintings of the Lascaux cave, France, humans were able to make work as subtle as the expressive face above....

Originally published 10/08/2013
Why Counter-Revolution

Does every revolution need a counter-revolution? While we are focusing on the Revolution, I’d like to raise a point about the counter-revolution of Thermidor. I do recognize that at first the leadership expected little change, but the regime morphed into a counter-revolution after a couple of months only. And the next few months witnessed signaled a significant change from the most radical era of the Revolution.Some revolutions do not seem to have this occur. For example, Iran still awaits a counter-revolution; likewise the Chinese did not have one either as long as Mao was alive. The Russians experienced the NEP in 1921 and then turned back from the market and the revolution resumed, not to abate in a thoroughgoing way until Gorbachev took power. It’s too early to tell for sure, but Egypt raced to counterrevolution very rapidly.These ruminations suggest that counter-revolution needs some definition and that world history can give us some idea of what are general factors in creating such a retreat.