Sweden returns Nazi-looted Kokoschka painting to Jewish heir

Sweden’s modern museum says it had returned a Nazi-confiscated painting by Austrian artist Oskar Kokoschka to the heir of a persecuted Jewish art collector.

“It is with joy and relief that we see the Kokoschka painting return to its rightful owner,” the state-owned Moderna Museet in Stockholm says in a statement.

Known for his expressionist portraits and paintings of landscapes, Kokoschka’s portrait of “Marquis Joseph de Montesquiou-Fezensac” (1910) initially belonged to Alfred Flechtheim, a well-known art collector and gallery owner who was forced to flee Nazi Germany in 1933.

“The painting was taken from him because he was Jewish,” the Moderna Museet in Stockholm says in a statement, adding it had therefore “decided to return the work to [his] heir.”

Flechtheim’s employee Alex Vomel sold the painting when the Nazis expropriated the gallery and artwork between 1933 and 1934.

“Vomel, who joined the Nazi party early on, took advantage of his former employer’s tragic situation,” the museum says.

A self-taught painter in the German Expressionism movement, Kokoschka was in the league of artists deemed “degenerate” by the Nazis.

The painting has been sent to the United States where Flechtheim’s heir Michael Hulton lives.

— AFP