One
of Switzerland's leading art museums says it will remove five paintings
from one of its exhibitions while it investigates whether they were
looted by the Nazis.
The works -
part of a collection at the Kunsthaus Zurich museum - are by some of the
world's most acclaimed artists, including Claude Monet and Vincent van
Gogh.
There have long been
suspicions about the provenance of works in the Emil Bührle Collection -
named after a German-born arms dealer who made his fortune during World
War Two by making and selling weapons to the Nazis.
The
decision to remove the paintings comes following the publication of new
guidelines aimed at dealing with the large number of cultural works
that have still not been returned to the families they were stolen from.
The
artworks that are under investigation are: Jardin de Monet à Giverny by
Claude Monet, Portrait of the Sculptor Louis-Joseph by Gustave Courbet,
Georges-Henri Manuel by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, The Old Tower by
Vincent van Gogh, and La route montante by Paul Gauguin.
The foundation board for the Emil Buhrle
Collection said in a statement it was "committed to seeking a fair and
equitable solution for these works with the legal successors of the
former owners, following best practices".
A
sixth work in the collection, La Sultane by Edouard Manet, has also
come under further scrutiny but the foundation said it did not believe
the new guidelines applied to it and that the painting would be
considered separately.
"Due to the
overall historical circumstances relating to the sale, the Foundation is
prepared to offer a financial contribution to the estate of Max
Silberberg in respect to the tragic destiny of the former owner," it
said.
Silberberg was a German Jewish
industrialist whose extensive art collection was sold at forced auctions
by the Nazis. It is thought he was murdered at the Auschwitz Nazi death
camp during the Holocaust.
According to the Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper, there has been debate
about whether Silberberg was forced to sell La Sultane or whether he
freely did so for financial reasons.
More than 20 countries, including Switzerland, agreed earlier this year to new best practices from the US State Department about how to deal with Nazi-looted art.
They
were issued to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1998 Washington
Conference Principles, which laid out a set of principles aimed at
making restitution for items that were either stolen or forcibly sold.
The
principles are an important recourse for families seeking to recover
looted art as, under Swiss law, no legal claims for restitution or
compensation can be made today for works from the Bührle collection due
to statutes of limitations.
Stuart
Eizenstat, the US secretary of state's special advisor on Holocaust
issues, said during the announcement of the best practices in March that
it was estimated "over 100,000 of the 600,000 paintings and many more
of the millions of books, manuscripts, ritual religious items, and other
cultural objects stolen have never been returned".
Up
to his death in 1956, Bührle amassed a collection of about 600
artworks. A large number of these are managed by the Bührle Foundation
and have been on display at the Kunsthaus as part of a 20-year loan.
The rest are said to hang in the homes of Bührle's surviving relatives.
