Image Reuters: Michael Dalder
Wikipedia says that Matisse, thoroughly unpolitical, was shocked when he heard that his daughter Marguerite, who had been active in the Résistance during the war, was tortured (almost to death) in a Rennes prison and sentenced to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. (Marguerite avoided further imprisonment by escaping from the Ravensbrück-bound train, which was halted during an Allied air strike; she survived in the woods until rescued by fellow resisters. What a daring and courageous thing to do! Marguerite Matisse, is presently the subject of an intimate, intriguing new exhibit at the Baltimore Museum of Art: "Matisse's Marguerite: Model Daughter", until January 19th 2014.
Read more: http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/arts/artsmash/bs-ae-arts-story-0920-20130919,0,4316032.story#ixzz2l0ioWC00
So mysterious, it looks like a magical night. Looking at it, you enter a fantastical world of imagination, or a whimsical fable. There is a sense of fantasy, of fanciful stories. Or perhaps it's a dream or a series of dreams, like we all get. When we wake up, we wonder what the heck happened during the night, so many things passing through...
Everything seems so dark, yet we remember a few things so vividly, just like the bright yellows and reds jumping out of the painting.
Image Reuters: Michael Dalder
Germany has begun publishing an online list of works that were among a vast trove of Nazi-looted art found in a Munich apartment.
Last year German customs department investigators seized the 1,406 works, dating from the 16th century to the modern period and by artists including Canaletto, Courbet, Picasso and Toulouse-Lautrec.
The haul, found in the apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt, the reclusive son of a wartime art dealer, was one of the most significant discoveries of works seized or extorted by the Nazi regime.
A statement from the national and Bavarian regional governments said 25 of the works would be displayed initially on the government's "Lost Art" website, which helps to establish the provenance of works seized by Germany's Nazi regime, mostly from Jews persecuted during the Holocaust.
However, heavy demand for the site led to technical problems that made it difficult to gain access.
"No-one was expecting such a storm of demand," a spokesman for the Culture Ministry said.
"The server was overwhelmed by the massive demand. The only thing to do is wait."
Art works from Picasso, Chagall and Otto Dix were among those on the government's website, according to German media.
Meike Hoffmann, an art expert from Berlin's Free University who has been assessing the find, had previously revealed that works by Henri Matisse, Dix and Marc Chagall were among the haul.
The move to publish details of the works has been broadly welcomed by lawyers representing families whose looted art was feared to have been lost forever.For some families, missing art constitutes the last personal effects of relatives murdered during the Holocaust.
Markus Stoetzel, a lawyer representing the heirs of Alfred Flechtheim, a Jewish art patron and collector who lost everything to the Nazis, says it is a step towards justice.
"Now more than ever it's time for Germany to do what it can to give justice to families of the Jewish victims whose art works were stolen by the Nazis from 1933 to 1945," he said.
However, some also criticised the government for keeping quiet on the looted art for so long."It's too little, too late but at least it's a step in the right direction now," said Claudia von Selle, an attorney in Berlin specialising in art.
"The lack of sensibility the last two years is still unfathomable if you consider the high level of provenance research in Germany."
Defending the policy of silence, government officials said they were worried about the security of the artworks and the related insurance.
They say that authorities were also conducting a confidential tax fraud investigation against Mr Gurlitt, who has since vanished.
The Nazis systematically plundered hundreds of thousands of art works from museums and individuals across Europe. Thousands of works are still missing.
Customs officials stumbled on the hoard during a routine inspection in Munich's smart Schwabing district in February 2012.
It is estimated to be worth up to 1 billion euros ($1.4 billion) and its legal status is likely to be contested.
Some legal experts say Mr Gurlitt may get to keep the art, but others say Germany could nullify his ownership under the 1998 Washington Declaration, a set of principles for dealing with looted art.
Jewish groups have urged that the origins of the art works be researched as quickly as possible so that if looted or extorted, they can be returned to their original owners.
Besides paintings, the haul included a large number of drawings and pastels on paper.
Reuters