Parliament is preparing to authorize the return of around fifteen paintings on Tuesday evening, including paintings by Gustav Klimt and Marc Chagall, via a bill which is intended to be “historic”.
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Fifteen works, including paintings by Gustav Klimt and Marc Chagall, will be able to be returned to the heirs of Jewish families looted by the Nazis: Parliament is preparing to authorize this return on Tuesday, February 15, via a bill which aims to be “historical”.
“It’s a first step” because “Looted works of art and books are still kept in public collections – objects that shouldn’t, never should have been there”underlines the Minister of Culture Roselyne Bachelot, while research on the provenance of the collections has accelerated.
It welcomes this law by which, for the first time in seventy years, “a government initiates a process allowing the restitution of works from public collections looted during the Second World War or acquired in troubled conditions during the Occupation, due to anti-Semitic persecution”.
The National Assembly adopted it unanimously on January 25, under the eyes of the families or their representatives in the gallery. It is the turn of the Senate dominated by the right to approve this text which makes it possible to derogate from the principle of inalienability of public collections.
Among the 15 works is Rosebushes under the treess by Gustav Klimt, kept at the Musée d’Orsay, and the only work by the Austrian painter belonging to the French national collections. It was acquired in 1980 by the State from a merchant.
Extensive research has established that it belonged to the Austrian Eléonore Stiasny who sold it during a forced sale in Vienna in 1938, during the Anschluss, before being deported and murdered.