Swiss Museum Removes Works by Artists Like Monet, Van Gogh as Origin of Nazi-Looted Art Examined

A man walks past the entrance of the Kunsthaus Zürich art museum on March 14, 2023. (AFP)
A man walks past the entrance of the Kunsthaus Zürich art museum on March 14, 2023. (AFP)
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Swiss Museum Removes Works by Artists Like Monet, Van Gogh as Origin of Nazi-Looted Art Examined

A man walks past the entrance of the Kunsthaus Zürich art museum on March 14, 2023. (AFP)
A man walks past the entrance of the Kunsthaus Zürich art museum on March 14, 2023. (AFP)

A Swiss museum on Thursday pulled down five paintings, including a van Gogh and a Monet, after the foundation that owns them called for a deeper look at their origins following new US guidelines on how to handle artworks once confiscated by the Nazis.

The Foundation E.G. Bührle Collection, which owns the works formerly shown at the Kunsthaus Zürich museum, said it was looking to reach a “fair and equitable solution” with the legal successors of the former owners, who were not identified.

The foundation’s board called for a new assessment of the works under new “Best Practices” published by the US State Department in March on how to deal with Nazi-confiscated art, as an upgrade to principles adopted in 1998.

“This is an important step in implementing the new Best Practices, now endorsed by 24 countries, including Switzerland,” Stuart Eizenstat, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s special adviser on Holocaust issues and a key architect of the principles, said in an email.

The works include the oil paintings “Jardin de Monet à Giverny” by Claude Monet from 1895, and “Der alte Turm” by Vincent van Gogh, of 1884. The other three are 19th-century works by French painters Gustave Courbet, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Gauguin.

A sixth painting, Edouard Manet’s “La Sultane,” was also considered as “a case deserving particular attention,” the foundation said in a statement last Friday.

The foundation said it was ready to make a financial contribution to the estate of Max Silberberg, a German Jew and art collector who died with his wife at the Nazi death camp in Auschwitz, in connection with the Manet out of respect to his “tragic destiny.”

Bührle, a German-born industrialist and weapons manufacturer who became Swiss in the late 1930s, oversaw a company that supplied the Axis powers including Nazi Germany, the foundation said.

Its collection of 203 works, given as a permanent loan to the Zurich museum in October 2021, is “one of the world’s most important collections of Impressionism with world-famous works by Van Gogh, Renoir, Cézanne, Manet, etc.,” the foundation said.

It said it has no reason to believe that other works in the collection fall under the scope of the “best practices,” but it will assess any new findings from previously undiscovered sources along with museum curators.

The foundation has issued a list of all 633 works that the industrialist acquired between 1936 and 1956, and says a review of the origins of those works was updated last year. The five works were pulled down as part of a new assessment.

After World War II, Douglas Cooper, a British army officer and art connoisseur, was asked by the Allies to investigate the disappearance of thousands of artworks. In a report that was declassified in Washington in 1975, Cooper identified Bührle as the largest Swiss buyer of art taken by the Nazis.



Iran's Vast Collection of Western Art, Much Long Hidden, Re-Emerges Despite High Tensions With US

A woman walks past a portrait of the leader of the American Indian Movement Russell Means, right, by American artist Andy Warhol, as she visits an exhibition titled Eye to Eye which showcases over 120 works by modern world artists as well as Iranian painters at Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, in Tehran, Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A woman walks past a portrait of the leader of the American Indian Movement Russell Means, right, by American artist Andy Warhol, as she visits an exhibition titled Eye to Eye which showcases over 120 works by modern world artists as well as Iranian painters at Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, in Tehran, Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
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Iran's Vast Collection of Western Art, Much Long Hidden, Re-Emerges Despite High Tensions With US

A woman walks past a portrait of the leader of the American Indian Movement Russell Means, right, by American artist Andy Warhol, as she visits an exhibition titled Eye to Eye which showcases over 120 works by modern world artists as well as Iranian painters at Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, in Tehran, Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A woman walks past a portrait of the leader of the American Indian Movement Russell Means, right, by American artist Andy Warhol, as she visits an exhibition titled Eye to Eye which showcases over 120 works by modern world artists as well as Iranian painters at Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, in Tehran, Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

As Iran faces increasing tensions with the West and turmoil at home, a new exhibition at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art is displaying Western artwork including pieces not seen by the public in at least a decade.
The unveiling of the exhibition “Eye to Eye” has drawn numerous women, their hair uncovered, to the underground galleries of the museum in Tehran's Laleh Park. Their presence, while unacknowledged by authorities, shows the way life has changed inside Iran just in the last few years even as the country's theocracy presses forward with enriching uranium to near-weapons grade levels and launching attacks on Israel during the ongoing Mideast wars, The Associated Press said.
“The first feeling that came to me, and I told my parents, was that I can’t believe I’m seeing these works, which have always been kept far from our eyes,” said Aida Zarrin, a young woman at the museum.
“If such events are held here and we can see artworks like the rest of the world, it’s enough. They are really precious.”
The government of Iran’s Western-backed shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and his wife, the former Empress Farah Pahlavi, built the museum and acquired the vast collection in the late 1970s, when oil boomed and Western economies stagnated. Upon opening, it showed sensational works by Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko, Claude Monet, Jackson Pollock and other heavyweights, enhancing Iran’s cultural standing on the world stage.
But just two years later, in 1979, Shiite clerics ousted the shah and packed away the art in the museum’s vault. Some paintings — cubist, surrealist, impressionist and even pop art — sat untouched for decades to avoid offending Islamic values and the appearance of catering to Western sensibilities. Nearly everything is believed still to be there, though an Andy Warhol print of the empress was slashed during the revolution.
Today, the collection is likely worth billions of dollars. Even with Iran now cash-strapped under Western sanctions, officials with the museum have been able to advocate for keeping the collection, though there have been occasional trades in the past for items from Persian history. Those sanctions may increase under the next administration of US President-elect Donald Trump.
As Iranian politics have thawed, re-frozen and thawed again, the collection resurfaces along with those changes.
Among the over 120 works being shown are ones from Picasso, Andy Warhol and Francis Bacon, along with celebrated Iranian artists. One of the Warhols, “Jacqueline Kennedy II,” is a silkscreen double image of the former US first lady in mourning after the 1963 assassination of her husband, President John Kennedy. Another Warhol portrait of Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger also garnered attention from the cellphone photo snappers.
“A lot of these works are important works in the history of art, and that’s why this show distinguishes itself from others,” said Jamal Arabzadeh, the exhibition's curator. ”A lot of people with less exposure to art have discovered the museum for the first time. ... We are seeing a part of the community that are discovering art and the museum and see the potential of this place, and this is something to be proud of.”
The presence of Western art comes as Iran's government has long fought against items like Barbie dolls and depictions of cartoon characters from “The Simpsons.” Such Western influences have been deemed un-Islamic in the past and have been seen as part of a “soft” cultural war against Iran.
With a ticket costing the equivalent of 14 US cents, the exhibition offers a rare government-sanctioned event not involving the country's politics or Shiite religion.
Among the visitors were many women defying the country's mandatory headscarf, or hijab, law. Crackdowns over the hijab have slowed down after Iran's presidential election in July that elected reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian, though individual cases of arrest continue to draw anger.
And for many, the cost of tickets to travel abroad given Iran's collapsing rial currency keep foreign museums out of reach.
“This is very attractive for art enthusiasts because not everyone can go and see museums abroad. It’s extremely exciting to see the works here,” said a woman who only gave her last name, Dolatshahi. “I had no idea I could see works by van Gogh and Picasso here.”