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Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of St Thomas. His importance resides in his contributions to both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. Pissarro studied from great forerunners, including Gustave Courbet and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. He later studied and worked alongside Georges Seurat and Paul Signac when he took on the Neo-Impressionist style at the age of 54.
Art theft, sometimes called artnapping, is the stealing of paintings, sculptures, or other forms of visual art from galleries, museums or other public and private locations. Stolen art is often resold or used by criminals as collateral to secure loans. Only a small percentage of stolen art is recovered—an estimated 10%. Many nations operate police squads to investigate art theft and illegal trade in stolen art and antiquities.
Nazi plunder was organized stealing of art and other items which occurred as a result of the organized looting of European countries during the time of the Nazi Party in Germany.
Rescuing Da Vinci is a largely photographic, historical book about art reclamation and preservation during and after World War II, written by American author Robert M. Edsel, published in 2006 by Laurel Publishing.
Judith Helen Dobrzynski is an American journalist and instructor in journalism. She is currently a freelance writer who has contributed articles on culture, the arts, business, philanthropy and other topics to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and several magazines.
The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War is a 1994 book by Lynn H. Nicholas and a 2006 documentary film. The book explores the Nazi plunder of looted art treasures from occupied countries and the consequences. It covers a range of associated activities: Nazi appropriation and storage, patriotic concealment and smuggling during World War II, discoveries by the Allies, and the extraordinary tasks of preserving, tracking, and returning by the American Monuments officers and their colleagues. Nicholas was awarded the Légion d'Honneur by France.
Hector Feliciano is a Puerto Rican journalist and author whose book "The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World's Greatest Works of Art" has shed light on an estimated 20,000 works of art plundered by the Nazis; each one is owned by a museum or a collector somewhere.
Robert KingWittman is a highly decorated former Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent who was assigned to the Philadelphia Field Division from 1988 to 2008. Having trained in art, antiques, jewelry and gem identification, Wittman served as the FBI's "top investigator and coordinator in cases involving art theft and art fraud". During his 20 years with the FBI, Wittman helped recover more than $300 million worth of stolen art and cultural property, resulting in the prosecution and conviction of numerous individuals.
Art theft and looting occurred on a massive scale during World War II. It originated with the policies of the Axis countries, primarily Nazi Germany and Japan, which systematically looted occupied territories. Near the end of the war the Soviet Union, in turn, began looting reclaimed and occupied territories. "The grand scale of looted artwork by the Nazis has resulted in the loss of many pieces being scattered across the world."
The Art Loss Register (ALR) is the world's largest database of stolen art. A computerized international database that captures information about lost and stolen art, antiques, and collectibles, the ALR is a London-based, independent, for-profit corporate offspring of the New York–based, nonprofit International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR). The range of functions served by ALR has grown as the number of its listed items has increased. The database is used by collectors, the art trade, insurers, and law enforcement agencies worldwide. In 1991, IFAR helped create the ALR as a commercial enterprise to expand and market the database. IFAR managed ALR's U.S. operations through 1997. In 1998, the ALR assumed full responsibility for the IFAR database, although IFAR retains ownership. In 1992, the database comprised only 20,000 items, but it grew in size nearly tenfold during its first decade.
Harry Bober was an American art historian, a university professor, and a writer. He was the first Avalon Professor of the Humanities a New York University (NYU). He wrote and edited several books and published numerous articles on the art, architecture and historiography of the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance period.
Paul Westheim was a German art historian and publisher of the magazine Das Kunstblatt. The fate of Westheim's art collection, which was sold after his death by Charlotte Weidler, has been the subject of major art restitution lawsuits.
Karl Mayländer was an Austrian art collector and businessman who was deported in 1941 from Vienna to Łódź, in German-occupied Poland, by the Nazis and later murdered in the Shoah.
Julian Guy Yonge Radcliffe is a British businessman, and the founder and chairman of the Art Loss Register (ALR).
The Diggers or Two Diggers is an oil painting by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh painted in late 1889 in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, France. It is in the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), Detroit, Michigan, United States. The Diggers is sometimes called Two Diggers among Trees to distinguish it from The Diggers , 1889.
Caracas Museum of Contemporary Art is a museum of modern art located in the Parque Central Complex in Caracas, Venezuela. It was founded on 30 August 1973 by the journalist and art patron Sofía Ímber, also its director from 1973 to her dismissal in the Chavist cultural revolution of 2001. It opened in 1974 and was the first museum in Venezuela to offer a specialist art library, a formal children's and adults' learning area, a special education department for the blind, and a multimedia arts centre.
Many priceless artworks by the Dutch Post-Impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh were looted by Nazis during 1933–1945, mostly from Jewish collectors forced into exile or murdered.
Max Silberberg was a major cultural figure in Breslau, a German Jewish entrepreneur, art collector and patron who was robbed and murdered by the Nazis. His art collection, among the finest of its era, has been the object of numerous restitution claims.
Hugo Nathan was a German Jewish banker and art collector.
References
- Feliciano, Hector. (1997). The Lost Museum: The Nazi Conspiracy to Steal the World's Greatest Works of Art. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-04194-7; OCLC 36446851
- Houpt, Simon and Julian Radcliffe. (2006). Museum of the Missing: a History of Art Theft. New York: Sterling Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4027-2829-7; OCLC 67375076
- Nicholas, Lynn H. (1994). The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War. New York City: Vintage Books. ISBN 978-0-679-40069-1; OCLC 32531154
