Max Liebermann’s pastel, “The Basket Weavers” was once part of the extensive art collection of David Friedmann in Breslau, Silesia, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland), which also included works by Courbet, Pissarro, and Rafaelli. After the spectacular discovery of over 1,000 looted works of art in a Munich apartment became public in 2013, Friedmann’s grandnephew David Toren learned that another of his family’s painting, «Two Riders on the Beach,» also by Max Liebermann, had been among those owned by the infamous Nazi art dealer, Hildebrand Gurlitt and was among those recovered in the apartment of Gurlitt’s son, Cornelius. Toren sued the German government for the “Riders” and became one of the very few heirs to recover stolen work from the Gurlitt stash. “The Basket Weavers” remained missing; it had been sold by Gurlitt’s daughter at auction in 2000 to an anonymous collector in Israel. After a lawsuit to force the auction house to reveal the identity of the buyer, Toren recovered the painting, which is now on temporary display at the Center for Jewish History. Toren has also sued Germany to recover the remaining paintings from the Friedmann collection and for the value of securities also seized by the Gestapo from Friedmann. The case is currently pending in federal court in Washington, D.C. David Toren, a retired New York attorney who was born in 1925 and escaped Germany on a Kindertransport to Sweden in 1939, will join his son Peter Toren for a discussion of this unique and ongoing restitution case, with an opportunity to view the “Basket Weavers.”
The Return of the Basket Weavers
Организатор:
Center for Jewish History
Адрес: New York, 15 West 16th Street