Mr. Curt Valentin's Nazi-Looted Art
As I mention at "Searching For Nazi-Looted Art", the most challenging asset searches / investigations can be those in a Holocaust-related art restitution case. The October 30, 2008, Minneapolis Star Tribune article "MIA sends Nazi 'loot' home to Paris", suggests the very same thing. It explains that the Minneapolis Institute of Arts engaged in ten years of detective work about Fernand Leger’s “Smoke Over Rooftops". The Star Tribune article advises that "Smoke Over Rooftops" was recently returned to its claimants in Paris, as Nazi-looted art. Also according to the article, "Smoke Over Rooftops" was purchased in 1951 from New York art dealer Mr. Curt Valentin and his Bucholz Gallery.
Although Mr. Valentin passed away in August 1954, he is portrayed in a number of different ways. The above-mentioned Star Tribune article reports that Mr. Valentin's "role in the transfer of modern art out of Europe is ambiguous at best". A biographical note at the Museum of Modern Art's "Curt Valentin Papers" meanwhile, states that Mr. Valentin was "widely respected as one of the most astute dealers in modern art...". Time Magazine even published "Domesticated Chisels" on January 13, 1941, which was about Mr. Valentin's Bucholz Gallery formerly on 57th Street in Manhattan. In it, Mr. Valentin said: 'Gallery business is sometimes fun, but I hate having to make money'.
The 1994 New York Times letter to the editor "Nazi Loot Found Its Way to New York's Modern Museum", however, alleges that MOMA concealed its direct purchase of five antiquities at a Nazi auction in Lucerne, by using Mr. Valentin / the Bucholz gallery as a middleman. Of these five antiquities, MOMA's Provenance Research Project identifies four of them as Nazi-looted art which was acquired on April 13, 1939, from Mr. Valentin's Bucholz Gallery:
- Andre Derain's "Valley of the Lot at Vers";
- E. L. Kirchner's "Street Scene";
- Paul Klee's "Around the Fish";
- Henri Matisse's "Blue Window".
During one Holocaust-related art restitution case, I too learned all about Mr. Valentin. In that particular case, documentary evidence demonstrated that Mr. Valentin was granted Nazi permission to sell art in America. Among the attached documents for example, is a translated copy of a November 14, 1936, Nazi permission letter sent to Mr. Valentin. U.S. authorities also acted in 1944 pursuant to the Trading With The Enemy Act and seized art belonging to Mr. Valentin's Bucholz Gallery. Said art was seized on the ground that it was beneficially owned by a German enemy national.
Copyright 2008 Fred L. Abrams
