Art historian Meike Hoffmann, an expert on “degenerate art†at the Free University of Berlin, offered a glimpse of some of the works during a slide show at Tuesday’s news conference with prosecutors.
She showed works she said had not been known to scholars, or known only from documents without any extant photos to give an idea what the work looked like.
“Such cases are of high importance to art historians,†she said.
A painting of a woman by Henri Matisse that was confiscated by the Nazis in France during World War II is not in the established catalogue of his works, she said.
A Chagall gouache of an allegorical scene also isn’t among the artists’ listed works. Works such as an unknown self-portrait by 20th-Century German artist Otto Dix and a woodcut by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner add new breadth to what’s known about them, Hoffmann said.
Hoffmann, an expert on the German expressionist movement that Kirchner belonged to, said the woodcut gave new insight into the artist’s use of colour.
Experts haven’t yet been able to determine where the Chagall came from, she said, describing the research as “very, very difficult.â€
“When you stand in front of the works, see the ones that were long thought to have been lost or destroyed and in a relatively good state — some of them dirty but not damaged — you have an incredible feeling of happiness,†Hoffmann said.
Some 500 works have undergone at least preliminary examination. Some correspond to known works that appear to have been legally sold, although their recent whereabouts may have been unknown.
For instance, a work by Courbet, previously in lists of his work, of a girl with a goat was found to have made its way into the collection through an auction in 1949 — after the end of World War II. A Franz Marc work, “Landscape with Horses,†was identified as coming from an art museum in Moritzburg, Germany.
Nemetz defended the delay in making the find public. He rejected calls to make images available on the Internet to help potential owners, citing copyright and security concerns.
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