Nazi Art Thieves (2017) - full transcript

Property rights are an important portion

of civilized society.

The Gurlitt Affair

gave worldwide prominence to
the still discreet history

of Nazi looted works of art.

1.500 canvases were found buried

in a Munich apartment,
among them were works

by Matisse, Chagall, and Renoir.

The story made the subject

of the hidden, stolen,
and looted works of art

seem like some sort of mini-drama,



like a riveting detective story,

whereas in fact, it was
part of a whole process

of dehumanization and
deculturalization of Europe.

The Bern Museum of Fine Arts

was designated custodian
of what was called

the Gurlitt Collection.

It is now therefore up to the museum

to reveal what happened to the works

and to restore them to
their legitimate owners.

Amidst the history of
betrayal, power, money,

and fascination for art,

Hitler had also undertaken
a Nazification of Europe

through an art genocide.

The looting of works



is one of the last unresolved outcomes

of the Second World War.

100.000 works of art were stolen,

and one million books were
destroyed in France alone.

This is the story of three works of art,

three major paintings stolen

from three leading European collectors.

The Woman in Blue in Front of
a Fireplace by Henri Matisse,

belonging to Paul Rosenberg,

Wilted Sunflowers, also
known as Autumn Sun II,

by Egon Schiele, owned by
Austrian collector Karl Grunwald,

and Man with a Guitar by Georges Braque,

belonging to Alphonse Kann.

Three works symbolizing
the genre of modern art

qualified by the Nazis
as a degenerate art,

the art that Hitler took upon himself

to totally eradicate in the name

of purification of culture,

whilst at the same time,

using it as a form of currency.

The way that they would use
the looted art was important.

I think you had categories,

like everything in Nazism.

You had the good art,
which was classical art.

It would go either to Hitler's collection

to the German museum collections

or to Goring's collection.

Then you had another type of art

like Impressionism that could go

to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,

the embassies, the German embassies,

and then you had degenerate art.

Degenerate art was the
pieces that would allow them,

like the Picassos, the
Matisse, to barter them

here in the Paris art market

and to sell them away.

Even if this type of art

was not appreciated and
was publicly denigrated

by the Nazi regime, they
were perfectly aware

that it represented a
vast financial aspect,

and that these works
could not be destroyed,

that it was better to trade them

and contribute to the war effort.

Degenerate art, is to him,

the art that comes out
of degenerate minds,

and he talks specifically about Cubism,

Surrealism, and Dadaism.

How can someone like
Michelangelo or the Mona Lisa,

and at the same time, can
create and invent the Holocaust?

Many art
collectors in Paris were Jewish,

and were therefore targeted
as a priority for looting.

Before and after the war,

the French capital was
the hub of the art market.

Alphonse Kann was a prominent
English art collector

living in Paris.

His collections featured Georges Braque's

Man with a Guitar, a major painting

and a founding work of Cubism.

By 1940, Kann had fled to England.

Alphonse
Kann was an elegant dandy,

a banker and an art collector

who had started out
collecting old paintings,

pre-Columbian and African
objects of art and furniture.

His taste in art was very
eclectic and very accurate.

He was
a rather amazing man.

He was fascinated by modern art

from 1910 to 1915 after the war,

just after the First World War,

and started buying it.

Alphonse Kann
bought unprecedented volumes

of pure Cubist Picassos
with great determination.

He knew full well that they
were extremely difficult works,

and that the general public
did not understand them.

At the
time of the occupation,

the German Special Services arrived.

If necessary, the French police helped out

because let's face it,
it was in the middle

of the collaboration.

Kann had left for England
a couple of years before,

and his house in St.
- Germain-en-Laye was looted.

It was early October
1940 right at the start.

In Germany before the war started,

they had already established
a list of the objects

that they may want.

From the very first day of
the occupation in June 1940,

the occupation of Paris,

they started looting objects
from the very first day,

looting galleries especially.

The lists
mentioned Paul Rosenberg,

a key figure in the Parisian art market.

In early 1940, he fled the French capital

for southwest France in a bid
to seek shelter for his family

and his most important works,

among them Woman in Blue in
Front of a Fireplace by Matisse.

As Rosenberg's collection was
so reputed and well-known,

the collector was a priority
target for the Nazis.

His family gallery featured works

by major Impressionists
alongside masterpieces

of modern art.

Paul
Rosenberg forged dealer

and friendship bonds with Picasso,

Braque, and Matisse.

When you have great art dealers,

they will be helping artists
develop their careers,

and this is what happened
with Paul Rosenberg.

It wasn't
simply a case of him

just commissioning and selling.

He didn't just trade.

He was perhaps also an impresario.

He promoted them and accompanied them,

and he also commissioned works.

He followed them.

This is an art dealer
who dealt with Picasso,

Mattise, Braque, and Leger.

In the 20s and 30s, this is man

who was controlling part of modern art.

In 1939 in Lucerne,

the Nazis organized a major
sale of degenerate art

that had been looted from German museums.

All profits from the sale were
poured into the war effort.

Collectors
and museum directors

from all over the world
flocked to the sale

because magnificent works
were put on the market

at unbeatable prices.

It attracted huge crowds,

but my grandfather said he
wouldn't buy any of the works.

He wouldn't give a
single coin to the Nazis

as he said the money would
fall back down upon them

in the form of bombs.

So he was identified as
being refractory to the Nazis

and was blacklisted.

This resulted in him closing his gallery,

and they retreated to near Bordeaux.

But interestingly, the illusion

that we could go back to Paris

to open the gallery again was still there.

He wrote to Matisse saying,

you'll see, I'll return
to Paris in April or May.

He thought he would open the gallery again

in April or May of 1940 and
put on a fantastic exhibition.

In the beginning, almost
none of the collectors,

the Rothschilds, the
Rosenbergs, the Kanns,

they never thought that
there could be looting

during the war, this type of
methodical, systematic looting.

This was unthinkable,

so they wanted to protect it, perhaps,

from the havoc of war,
from the soldier of war.

He had
a lot of his paintings

brought to southwest France near Bordeaux.

He hired a vault at the BNCI,

the French national bank
for trade and industry

which had a secured vault in Libourne

saying they'll be safe here.

Braque, who visited him,
hired the vault next to his.

At the time, Libourne

was in the occupied zone,

and persecution against Jews
were increasingly frequent.

Over there, he will
have to leave very quickly,

but he left behind many many things.

Then my
grandfather, grandmother,

and mother, families were torn apart,

crossed the border at Hendaye

to flee across Spain to Portugal.

Miraculously, they were able to get away,

take the boat in the middle
of the mines and submarines

and reach America.

Paul Rosenberg attracted
feelings jealousy,

so certain intermediaries denounced him.

There were people who
wanted to negotiate,

who wanted to have either a
percentage of it, a commission.

In kind, they would be receiving paintings

from the Rosenberg collection in exchange

for their information.

In 1941,
the Nazis, the Gestapo,

helped by the French authorities

forced the bank's vaults and
plundered their contents.

They looted my grandfather's
vault and Braque's too.

On the 5th of September 1941,

Paul Rosenberg's collection and stock

were transferred to the
Jeu de Paume Museum.

Hermann Goring,
number two at the Reich

and head of the Luftwaffe,

used the Jeu de Paume Museum

to store all the stolen works.

Here in late 1941, Alphonse Kann's

Braque Man with a Guitar

and Paul Rosenberg's Matisse Woman in Blue

in Front of a Fireplace

lay within a few meters of each other.

To transfer the thousands of stolen works

to the Jeu de Paume Museum,

Goring used the services of the E.R.R.,

the official looting body.

Goring took
the E.R.R. under his wing,

and this made transport and workforce

available to the E.R.R. to
regularly send things to Germany.

Goring had
his own personal train.

The entire last wagon
was used as a warehouse

for looted works of art.

He spent a large part of his time

seeking masterpieces throughout Europe

that could be looted from families

and compiled into a vast
personal collection at his home.

As grandmaster
of this villainous chess game,

Hermann Goring claimed all rights

over the destiny of the stolen works.

Man With a Guitar and Woman in
Blue in Front of a Fireplace

transited via his personal networks

that also supplied his private collection.

I'm just
discovering these photographs.

They're incredible.

Goring has just visited
the Jeu de Paume Museum,

where the works that
were plundered and looted

from the Jewish families were stored.

Goring visited the Jeu de Paume Museum

on over 20 occasions.

In November '42,

February '41, March '41, April '41,

May '41, July '41, August '41,

December '41, February '42, March '42,

14th of May '42, and November '42.

It's quite astonishing.

The man spent his life there.

He would visit incognito.

Goring, that horrible
character, liked degenerate art.

He had a room reserved for it,

referred to as the Martyr Room

where all the canvases he was
interested in were exhibited,

and he helped himself freely from it.

This is a photograph

of the Martyr Room, and in this room,

hanging from floor to ceiling,

are all the works considered

as belonging to degenerate art.

We can recognize works by
Chagall, Matisse, Picasso,

numerous works by Dali, Fernand
Leger, and Torres Garcia.

According to us,

that's the Braque there.

You can see the composition and the size

because it's a tall and narrow painting.

The Jeu
de Paume became the hub

of Nazi looted art and
its parallel market.

One young museum employee risked her life

in tracking and registering
the traceability

of the paintings.

She was to play a key role

in the post war restitution.

Jaujard,
the owner of the Louvre,

asked Rose Valland, a young woman

from a very modest background,

to be on site and to witness
what the Nazis were doing.

She was to play a key role.

She observed
and rummaged in the bins

to obtain duplicates of
everything that was written down.

She tried to obtain the addresses

of the looted collectors.

At night in the arrangerie,
she would jot down

in her little notebooks
summaries of all the works

she'd seen, where they came from,

and where they were
going as far as she knew.

After the liberation, this
proved to be a gold mine

for the French museums and collectors.

Rose Valland flagged that
this painting of Braque's

was going to be exchanged.

We have the exchange documents.

The document can be found in
the archives of the Louvre,

and the same document
exists in the archives

of the Musee D'Orsay.

It's
very interesting to see

the correlation between the exchanges

that Rose Valland noted
down during this period

and Goring's visits.

For example, the exchange
that interests us

took place in February 1942,

and Goring was there on
the 25th of February 1942.

We found the Braque Man
with a Guitar, Item 1062,

with the reference HG, Hermann Goring.

So, Man With a Guitar disappeared in 1942.

Like the Braque,

Matisse's Woman in Blue
in Front of a Fireplace

was also exchanged.

It was part of a batch
of four Matisse paintings

that Goring exchanged with
a collaborator art dealer

for a Jan Brueghel painting.

Here we see
that a member of the E.R.R.,

the body dedicated to the looting of art,

is getting ready to serve
him a glass of champagne,

and the work he is holding

is the Port of Antwerp by Jan Brueghel.

Goring is sealing the agreement

which is to recover the Jan Brueghel

and to exchange with the art dealer

the four Matisse looted
from the Jewish families.

The state of the art market

in Paris during the war,

I realize that it was a very lively place.

They
operated in a network.

It was an illegal market,
a parallel market.

They operated a network
and subsidiaries emerged.

There were auctions at war constantly.

Many art dealers were open,

which meant a lot of collaboration,

of course, naturally, it
has to mean collaboration.

Everybody, everybody,

I say that in all honesty,

including French gallery
owners during the occupation,

everybody profited from the looting.

On October the 31st, 1942,

we can read sale of
assets of Israeli Khann,

three days of sales.

The Gazette of the Hotel
Drouot auctioning house

three days of sales.

Do you know what three
days of sales represents?

Hundreds of canvases, and
that's just the French part.

The two
Braque and Matisse canvases

that were stolen from Alphonse
Kann and Paul Rosenberg

disappeared into the parallel market.

The Nazis carried on plundering
European art heritage.

The same message that they apply,

let's say to bring in people
from Paris to Auschwitz,

you know by using trains,

by using cattle trains, cattle wagons,

we have to put it as an analogy

in how they did the looting.

I think it was more or
less the same method

that was applied.

Throughout Europe,

the Nazis used an industrialized
system for looting.

It was designed to let no work escape.

In 1942 in Austria, the
enlightened collector

Karl Grunwald fled the country

with a few of his works
including Wilted Sunflowers

by Egon Schiele.

Karl Grunwald
managed to remove from Austria

a large share of the paintings

he was most fond of by declaring them

to be of lower value
than they really were,

so that nobody was interested in the works

he had collected.

He had them transported to Strasbourg

where he placed them in a warehouse.

He himself
had managed to obtain

and to buy a visa to leave Austria.

He hoped to reach the
US by crossing France

and leaving from Spain,
but the rest of the family

did not manage to buy visas in time

and were deported.

Unfortunately,
when Karl Grunwald

had to leave France,
he no longer had access

to the warehouse, and in
order to save his own life,

had to leave the paintings
behind in France.

He managed to flee the country.

Originally, he thought he could
head straight for New York,

but he first had to travel via Morocco,

where he was detained
in very bad conditions

and where he suffered terribly.

What we knew
about Schiele's painting

is that it was up for auction,

organized by the Nazis
around 1943 in Strasbourg.

We don't know whether it was bought,

or whether it remained unsold,

and we just don't know what happened

between 1942 and now.

In 1943, the
three canvases vanished

into the lucrative parallel market.

At the end of the war,
the figures were added up.

The Third Reich had plundered
over 600.000 works of art.

Karl Grunwald took refuge in New York,

where he remained.

Alphonse Kann stayed in London.

Only Paul Rosenberg returned to Paris

as soon as the war ended.

When my
grandfather arrived in 1945,

he started to search for his paintings,

and people began to talk.

I would've liked my grandfather, perhaps,

to take legal action, but
in Monte Cristo style,

he said he would take revenge.

He went from gallery to gallery saying,

that's mine, that's mine, and that's mine.

I even think somebody said to him,

ah no, I haven't seen a
single of your paintings.

Of course you know if I had
seen one of your paintings,

I would've said so.

I would've made sure it was safe,

and my grandfather said,
well that one's mine.

Ah, there must be a mistake then,

came the reply, and he
gave it back to him.

The art world was
very small at the time.

You knew that such and such a painting

had been at the Paul Rosenberg Gallery.

You may have seen it,
someone told you about it,

it's very simple.

There was
artistic collaboration.

If you wanted to find something,

and if you wanted to trace
things back at the time,

all you had to do was look
at Paul Rosenberg's catalogs.

The dealers who
collaborated during the war

and who made a fortune at the time

pretended they didn't know.

But a dealer by definition knows.

Otherwise, they're just
small time antique dealers.

They were clearly being dishonest.

In the post war years,

the collectors set out in
search of their stolen assets

in an international market
that was flooded with works

that had had a troubled past.

An artistic recovery
commission was established

on November 24th, 1944.

45.400 paintings were
identified and returned

via the commission after the war,

but another 50.000 were still
missing without a trace.

In the 50s and 60s,

those sorts of questions weren't asked.

There was a none memory
surrounding the plundering.

When you realize that it was
only the historian Paxton

in 1970s who revealed the collusion

of the Vichy regime in the
deportations of the Jews,

so 25 or 30 years after
the end of the war,

you can imagine that people didn't know

the whereabouts of the paintings.

Looting of works of art

were nevertheless considered
at the Nuremberg Trials

to be a war crime.

Alphonse Kann died in 1948 in London

with nobody knowing if
he had managed to recover

Man With a Guitar.

Paul Rosenberg died in 1959

not knowing what had become

of Woman in Blue in Front of a Fireplace.

And Karl Grunwald died in 1964

having asked his son to carry on

searching for Wilted Sunflowers,

his favorite painting.

It wasn't until 36 years
after the end of the war

that one of the three works reemerged

at a famous French museum.

In 1981, the Pompidou
Center was the object

of much media attention following

the spectacular acquisition
of Georges Braque's Cubist gem

Man With a Guitar.

At the time, there was no more mention

of Alphonse Kann.

In the 1980s, nobody was interested

in the stories of looting.

It wasn't until the mid-1990s

that the issue of the
restitution was finally raised.

The French minister for foreign affairs

decided to open its
archives to the public,

and in particular, the E.R.R. report

which detailed the lists and references

of all the works and families
that had been looted.

One morning in 1996,

a client came to see me.

He was a distant heir of Kann,

and he brought me this.

This E.R.R. report had been given

to each one of the families.

That's exactly how it happened.

I went to the foreign office

and got the E.R.R. list.

Look what I found.

And it was in Beaubourg,
sleeping peacefully

on a wall in Beaubourg.

In 1996, Kann's heirs

asked for the restitution
of Man with a Guitar,

a painting looted from their
ancestor Alphonse Kann.

We made contact
with the head of the museum

at the time, Mr. Aillagon,

and we had a rather hard time

because the Beaubourg museum
was having none of it.

We took a while to react

because we considered that if the work

had indeed be involved with
the Nazi's looting policy

at some point, it had
reappeared at the end of the war

in conditions that could've led one

to believe that there was a transaction

between Alphonse Kann and Andre Lefebvre.

Andre Lefebvre was a figure

of the Parisian art market.

The painting reappeared
with him after the war.

In other words, after it had been looted.

The Pompidou Center

suggested that Andre Lefebvre
could have acquired the work

entirely legitimately.

Had it done so, there
would've been a trace of that.

Curiously, the archives of Andre Lefebvre

given to the Pompidou
Center were very detailed

up until 1939, but from
the looting to 1945,

there was nothing.

As chance would have it, they disappeared.

Nevertheless, Andre Lefebvre

was associated with Man With a Guitar

as soon as the painting
reappeared after the war.

He officially lent the
work for an exhibition

in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany in 1948.

One might think

that the Frieburg exhibition

was a way to make the painting seem

as though it belonged to Andre Lefebvre,

like a sort of laundering.

The work reappeared belonging
to the great collector

and patron Andre Lefebvre.

That really implies

the organizers of these exhibitions

had highly perverse intentions.

It really implies they had
extremely somber intentions

and supposes that they were engaged

in laundering operations for
looted canvases and works.

It's
unthinkable that Andre Lefebvre

would've acted openly as
the owner of the painting

while Alphonse Kann was still alive even

without the existence of an agreement

between Alphonse Kann and Andre Lefebvre.

What was the nature of that agreement?

Was it a sale or an
exchange or something else?

There is no trace of it today.

There
was an article in 1974

in Connaissance des Arts by
his godson Jerome Penieux

who often had lunch at
Andre Lefebvre's home,

and who himself said that he never knew

where the paintings came from,

and Lefebvre never
spoke to him about them.

After the war,

Alphonse Kann claimed
back a great many works

that belonged to him.

Why did he not claim back that one

when it was one of the most
important works he possessed?

You could say, but it's only a theory,

that he considered he'd given the work

to somebody else, Andre Lefebvre.

To everything we provided

in the way of documents gave rise

to a we're also going
to carry out research,

we'll meet with you later,

and they came back with
a standard response,

no it's not possible.

It's typical of museums

to draw negotiations out

even when the legal
situation relatively clear.

And this lengthy process is partly aimed

at wearing down the claimants.

They try to negotiate a different amount

for the transaction, or else,

an entirely different agreement

that is more advantageous for the museum

or for the owner.

For two to three years,

we tried to negotiate with them,

but because they were not receptive,

we had to take the bull by the horns.

We took court action for concealment.

The family considered

that the work was being concealed,

as they proved the
painting had been looted,

but the museum was keeping it.

And so two representatives

of the Kann family attended
the following session

along with myself with
Aillagon in the judge's office.

It was a moment of great pleasure for us,

less for them.

The first looting

was the one carried out
by the Nazis in 1940,

and the second was when
the Pompidou Center

refused to return the painting.

The court
case for concealment

triggered an inquiry that was
led by an investigating judge.

It lasted several years.

It was at that time in 2005

that chance filled another 60 year void.

Karl Grunwald's Egon Schiele painting,

Wilted Sunflowers, mysteriously reappeared

in a sleepy suburb in eastern France.

It was already exhibited in 1914

at the Munich secession,
then in Brussels in 1914,

and in Vienna, and then in Paris.

What you see here, the text
written about the picture,

it's all about the Earl of Provenance

because it was very well recorded,

so a lot was known about the 20, 25 years

after it was painted, but after that,

no more records.

Painted in 1914, on
the eve of the outbreak

of World War I.

You see the sunflowers.

Behind the sunflowers
you've got the fading sun.

It's an autumn sun.

The sunbeams are very weak.

It's not warm anymore.

It's cold.

The sunbeams are not even warm enough,

not even strong enough anymore,

that the sunflowers turn around

towards the sun as they usually do.

No with Schiele, they
turn away from the sun,

they look at you, almost
like human beings.

They're wilting, they're fading.

It's a symbol of decay and aging,

and it proved to be an
almost apocalyptic symbol

of World War I.

Karl
Grunwald was a lieutenant

stationed in Vienna during
the First World War.

Egon Schiele, a young soldier
working in the administration,

was very unhappy with his post.

He suffered a great deal as a
government worker and soldier.

Grunwald made sure Schiele
was transferred to Vienna

so he could live in better conditions,

ensuring he was allowed to
sleep at home, for example,

instead of in the barracks,

which enabled him to carry on his work.

That was very important for the artist.

He saved him.

He possibly saved him from death

by looking after him and pulling him

away from the front line.

He commissioned a painting from him,

and he already then started
collecting his works.

Grunwald was
an extraordinary collector.

He recognized Schiele's talent

well before anybody else.

As Schiele died at a very young age,

just 27, his production
is relatively limited.

Grunwald bought up a large
share of that production,

a lot of paintings, supporting
him not only artistically,

but morally too.

In 2005, there
were very few works by Schiele

in circulation.

The artist died aged 27,

and his unknown paintings are very rare.

Wilted Sunflowers
reappeared as if by magic

in the suburb of Mulhouse

in a furnished apartment bought

through a life annuity scheme

a few years earlier by
a working class family.

It was autumn.

It was autumn 2005 when we came here.

We received a call from
a lawyer here in Mulhouse

who told us he had a client

who had discovered
something in his apartment,

and we should try and have a look at it.

We just saw, it can't
be, it must be a fake,

it must be a copy, a reproduction,

I mean there are reproductions often,

even early reproductions
of these paintings.

It's a masterpiece, and
you don't find masterpieces

just like that.

We knew that if it was genuine,

it would be worth several million dollars.

And we walked up the stairs,

and there was sort of light
coming through the window,

and the picture was leaning on the wall,

on the floor, against the wall,

and we saw it, and literally,

within seconds, we knew this is it.

This is the long lost picture

which hadn't been seen for 60 years,

the original sunflower picture by Schiele

painted in 1914.

For some
players and observers

in the art world, the tale
of this magical reappearance

orchestrated by Christie's is
almost too good to be true.

I spoke
with his heirs in New York.

And it's very probably
the official version,

but in fact, it's just
a case of big business.

There's this young man, very nice guy,

who owns this, he's in the
possession of this picture,

and we know that the large family,

the Grunwald family,
scattered all over the world,

who are entitled to get it back.

The case
of Wilted Sunflowers

was a wonderful opportunity
for an auction house

like Christie's to present
itself in the public's eyes

as a key intermediary and the savior

of an important work of art,

so a great stroke of luck for Christie's.

The painting had apparently
been missing for decades,

and apparently, nobody knew where it was.

Even the occupants of the apartment

were oblivious to the
real nature of the work.

Then an expert like
Christie's could come along

and solve the case.

The heirs were not even
given the opportunity

to choose the solution they preferred.

It wasn't just about
giving it back, hopefully,

finding a solution, but it also meant

this picture was a symbol

of bringing different generations
of the Grunwald family

together again.

They all knew this was the painting

that grandfather had
always been looking for

for decades.

On this point,

Christie's played a key role.

In spite of everything,
Christie's did not just carry out

a very positive advertising campaign,

they also earned money.

That might not have been necessary

if they wanted to tell a really moving

fairy tale type story.

We sold it then, six months later,

for something like 21.7 million dollars,

and yet we found it in an apartment

which was worth a fraction
of this, a tiny fraction,

so with the proceeds of the painting,

it probably could've
bought the whole street.

The Grunwald family, they have wanted him

to be at the table, and
we brought them together

in London in a hotel nearby Christie's,

and we were sitting
around a long oval table,

I never forget that,
and there was a speech

by one member of the family,

and they welcomed him
as yet another member,

as another part of the Grunwald family.

It was very moving.

It was extremely emotional.

We don't know anything,

and I'm sure that the people involved,

because of the duty of confidentiality

that is always written
into contracts like this,

and which really must be respected

to avoid facing major inconvenience,

unfortunately will not enable
us to know the full truth.

Well, we don't talk about
how the case was settled,

but they found an agreement.

Let's put it this way.

You'll
notice I'm smiling a little

when you mention the story.

It's not a rare situation.

Auction houses or art
dealers contact the heirs

of Jewish collectors and say,

we know where your painting is.

We can't tell you, but we can serve

as an intermediary to reach an agreement,

so that both you and the current owner

benefit from the sale.

It's very pragmatic, but legally,

it's highly questionable

because in my opinion, the Grunwald family

should've recovered their property.

It's quite common.

We mustn't judge.

The results speak for itself.

The painting reappeared,
it became famous again

after decades, it was
wrenched from oblivion,

but the market spoke,

and the market enabled the painting

to obtain an incredible value.

We hope that this story

will serve as an example

for many other restitution cases to come

that amicable solutions are possible.

21.7 million euros.

Whatever the mysterious arrangement was,

that was the sum the auction raised.

Meanwhile, the inquiry carried out

by the investigating judge into Braque's

Man With a Guitar dragged on.

Discussions between the Pompidou Center

and Alphonse Kann's heirs
remained highly charged.

The accusation of concealment

triggered lengthy research
that did not succeed

in throwing light on historical haze

surrounding the painting's
journey just after it was looted.

The
accusation did not go through.

The judge closed the case.

At the time, the judge gave me a hearing.

The study took a number of years

and was never able to formally establish

that at a particular moment in time,

a deed of assignment had been organized

between Alphonse Kann and a third party,

so we concluded that
Alphonse Kann's beneficiaries

should be given the benefit of the doubt.

The Pompidou Center

kept the painting and
indemnified the family.

An agreement protocol was drawn up.

The Kann
family certainly made

the right decision that the painting

should remain in the Pompidou Center.

I think they were
extremely generous and fair

in not making the maximum
amount of money out of it.

I wouldn't be surprised, if today,

a painting like that reached between

70 and 80 million euros.

You just don't find
paintings like that anymore.

It's incredibly rare,

and it's one of the symbols of a movement,

if not the most important
movement of the 20th century.

Today,
museums consider themselves

responsible for the preservation of art.

Many museums when confronted

with request for restitution respond,

for centuries we have saved, protected,

and made these works accessible.

That's our mission, and
we don't want a painting

which has since become extremely precious

to disappear into the private sphere.

For museums, it has always
been a complicated matter,

very complicated, because they do not deal

with these paintings or
with these art objects

as if they had been looted.

They deal with them as
if they were in museums

or not in museums, and we
know that many curators,

once they have an object
inside the museum,

it should never leave the museum

under any circumstance.

I do
understand the museums.

It's hard for them to part with the works

because they have been
hanging on their walls

for 30 or 40 years, and all of a sudden,

they're asked to give them back.

Yet, ultimately, it didn't belong to them.

They were its custodians.

I understand their frustration,

but it's also logical
that they return things

that they do not belong to them

if they're not really theirs.

Today, the case of Braque

still remains a highly sensitive affair

in the memory of the Pompidou Center.

After purchasing the painting in 1981,

the museum had to pay a
second very large sum,

confidential this time,

to keep the work in the
national collections.

The case of Paul Rosenberg's Matisse

recounts a different story.

The painting reappeared in 2012,

ironically, in the same Pompidou Museum

during a Matisse retrospective

67 years after it first disappeared.

Lent by a Norwegian foundation from Oslo,

Woman in Blue in Front of a Fireplace

was exhibited alongside dozens
of other works by Matisse.

As it happened,

I didn't know the list
of missing paintings

off by heart, so I missed it.

Luckily, certain specialists,

in particular Emmanuel Pollack,

noticed it and pointed it out.

Our family was alerted
that there was a painting

that belonged to the family.

We were contacted in spring of 2012

by the lawyer of the
Rosenberg family in New York,

and they presented us with
the papers from E.R.R.

that are now in Washington

and claimed that the painting was stolen.

It was the first case in Norway,

so it's of course a heavy
burden for a small museum

to start investigating such a huge issue.

When
you know the conditions

the work was lost in,

and that it was sold during the Nazi era,

things become more complicated

because we needed to trace the work of art

during the ensuing 50 years

even though it was sometimes sold

four or five times, and
that's very difficult.

When we deframed the paintings,

we couldn't find any traces or evidence

of the history of the painting at all.

The only mark on the back of the painting

is a stamp for a Norwegian crown,

so it's been brought into Norway.

That's the only thing we know.

Like for Braque,
the heirs had to prove

the Woman in Blue in Front of a Fireplace

had indeed belonged to Paul Rosenberg.

They had to provide proof

that it had been in the vault in Libourne.

At the archives of the French Ministry

of Foreign Affairs,
Paul Rosenberg's actions

can be traced as he set
out to find his canvases

as soon as the war ended.

There, there
is a very important note.

So, vault of Libourne,
as indicated in my letter

dated the 15th, the vault was forced open

on the 28th of April, 1941.

In the presence of the
occupying authorities.

The contents of the vault were transferred

to another vault, and an
inventory was drawn up

by the director of the
Bordeaux School of Fine Arts,

Mr. Roganneau.

So here, you can clearly
see a painting by Matisse,

Woman in Blue in Front of a Fireplace,

measuring 60 by 81, does indeed feature

in this inventory drawn up by Roganneau

from the Libourne vault.

We know that in September 1941,

these works arrived at
the Jeu de Paume Museum.

On the back of an information
card of a Matisse drawing,

I see a list, an inventory

with Woman in Blue in Front of a Fireplace

with the inventory number of
Paul Rosenberg's collection,

and the fact that it's presented

with this sentence,

taken either in Floirac or in Paris,

leads me to believe that
it was not recovered

after the war, but that
he was still searching

for his works.

The presence of

the Woman in Blue in Front of a Fireplace

in the Libourne vault confirms

it belonged to Paul Rosenberg.

It remains to be determined

whether or not at the
time of the acquisition

the Henie Onstad couple knew
it was a looted painting.

The painting entered

the Norwegian foundation before the 1960s

because between 1960 and 1963,

I tracked it in the exhibition
catalogs about 17 times

which makes me think the couple,

the owners of the work,
were acting in good faith.

Because when you lend a work,

you're not afraid to exhibit it.

You're not afraid of claims by the family,

so they didn't know.

The thing about researching the history

is that you can never be sure.

You have to make a decision
upon the facts you have,

and depending on them, you decide

whether or not to return
an artwork like we did,

and so it will always
be a part of the history

that is not really covered.

The return
of the Rosenberg collection

Matisse painting by a
private Norwegian museum

is a highly unusual case of restitution.

Unusual because, and
I find it astonishing,

albeit very positive,
the private foundation

declared it was prepared to return

a work in its possession
to the Rosenberg family

without being obliged to
do so by Norwegian law.

It was a sad moment
seeing the painting leave,

but I'm sure that we did the right thing,

and that's the most
important for the institution

and for me.

It's very moving

to find a canvas like that

because you wonder what
it has lived through,

what vicissitudes it went through

since it was painted in Matisse's studio

and was taken directly
from Matisse's studio

to my grandfather's gallery.

Then suddenly, the war arrived,

and it got caught up in the turmoil,

passing from a Gestapo lorry

to warehouses guarded by the Nazis,

and from there, to shady dealers

who conjured it away,

so it has an incredible story.

The looting of works of art

remains a symbol of what
the Nazis tried to do,

what they failed to do,

and what the Allies tried to restore,

the plundering of European culture.