Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media restitutes Signac painting from Gurlitt art trove — Grütters: “We will not cease our efforts to investigate Nazi art theft”

Moni­ka Grüt­ters, Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment Com­mis­sion­er for Cul­ture and Me­dia, to­day hand­ed over the paint­ing “Quai de Clichy. Temps gris (Opus 156)” (Clichy Dock, Gray Weath­er) by Paul Signac to Ag­nès Sevestre-Bar­bé, the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the fam­i­ly of the orig­i­nal own­er, Gas­ton Pros­per Lévy.  This is the sixth re­turn from the hoard of Cor­nelius Gurlitt. The art­work was dis­cov­ered by re­searchers from the Schwabing Art Trove Task­force and the Gurlitt Prove­nance Re­search project.

In a state­ment, Moni­ka Grüt­ters said: “A count­less num­ber of most­ly Jew­ish col­lec­tors of art and cul­tur­al ob­jects, like Gas­ton Pros­per Lévy, were per­se­cut­ed, robbed or had their prop­er­ty ex­pro­pri­at­ed by the Nazis. Oth­ers were forced to sell their pos­ses­sions at prices far be­low mar­ket val­ue, or leave them be­hind when they fled or em­i­grat­ed. This suf­fer­ing and in­jus­tice can nev­er be rec­ti­fied.”

She went on to ex­plain that that is why it was so sig­nif­i­cant that prove­nance re­searchers had man­aged to iden­ti­fy the paint­ing “Quai de Clichy” by Paul Signac as a work of art con­fis­cat­ed by the Nazis and, with the re­turn of the paint­ing to the fam­i­ly of the orig­i­nal own­er, a con­tri­bu­tion had been made to “at least a lit­tle bit of his­tor­i­cal jus­tice”. Ev­ery resti­tu­tion, ev­ery just and fair so­lu­tion counts, said the Min­is­ter of State. “The pro­cess can of­ten be long and time-con­sum­ing. But we will not cease our ef­forts to con­sis­tent­ly drive for­ward in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to Nazi art theft. We owe this to the vic­tims of the Na­tion­al So­cial­ist reign of ter­ror and their de­scen­dants,” said Prof. Grüt­ters.

Dr. Mar­cel Brül­hart, rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the can­ton of Bern in the um­brel­la foun­da­tion Kun­st­mu­se­um Bern—Zen­trum Paul Klee, said: “Af­ter care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion, Kun­st­mu­se­um Bern de­cid­ed to ac­cept the in­her­i­tance of Cor­nelius Gurlitt in or­der to make a con­tri­bu­tion to in­ves­ti­gat­ing Nazi art theft and to mit­i­gat­ing the in­jus­tice that took place. We there­fore wel­come ev­ery re­turn of an art­work to the right­ful heirs fol­low­ing ex­ten­sive re­search work. What mat­ters above all, how­ev­er, is not the num­ber of resti­tu­tions, but the hon­est and com­mit­ted ef­fort to clar­i­fy the ori­gin of all works from the Gurlitt art trove.”

The Gurlitt Prove­nance Re­search project team, which is lo­cat­ed at the Ger­man Lost Art Foun­da­tion, had iden­ti­fied the work as Nazi-loot­ed art in Oc­to­ber 2018. Ac­cord­ing to eye­wit­ness re­ports, Ger­man sol­diers took the paint­ing from Gas­ton Pros­per Lévy’s chateau in France in 1940.

Kun­st­mu­se­um Bern is Cor­nelius Gurlitt’s sole heir and there­fore heir to the Gurlitt art trove. In an agree­ment of Novem­ber 24, 2014, be­tween the Fed­er­al Re­pub­lic of Ger­many, the Free State of Bavaria and the Stiftung Kun­st­mu­se­um Bern, it was agreed that the prove­nances of the art­works in the col­lec­tion—which num­ber over 1,500—would be re­searched and the Ger­man gov­ern­ment would re­turn Nazi-loot­ed prop­er­ty to vic­tims or their de­scen­dants.