The Paris Court of Appeal on Wednesday condemned the state to return three paintings by the Fauvist painter André Derain to the heirs of René Gimpel, a great collector of Jewish art looted during the war, more than 75 years after the Occupation.
According to the judgment consulted by AFP, the court overturned the judgment of the criminal court which had refused in August 2019 the restitution of the three works, painted between 1907 and 1910 and kept at the Museum of Modern Art in Troyes and the Cantini Museum. from Marseille.
There are
"precise, serious and concordant indices"
according to which the three paintings are indeed those which have been looted and
"whose sale is null"
, in application of the ordinance of April 21, 1945, writes the court in its decision.
At first instance, the court ruled on the contrary that there remained
"persistent uncertainties as to the identification of the paintings"
, which have traveled, changed names, sometimes been re-lined over the decades.
Kahnweiler Collection
"It's great"
, congratulated AFP the lawyer of the heirs, Corinne Hershkovitch, who had started in 2013 with the museums.
“The court followed us on points that we had put forward and we are very happy to be recognized,”
she added.
The descendants of the Parisian gallery owner are still waiting to recover all of the works looted or disappeared in the tumult of the war.
After years of investigation, they claimed to have found the Derains, acquired by their grandfather during the sale of the Kahnweiler collection in 1921 in Paris.
They demanded from the Ministry of Culture the return of these
Landscape
paintings
in Cassis
,
La Chapelle-sous-Crecy
and
Pinède, Cassis
, exhibited for the first two in Troyes and for the third in Marseille.
René Gimpel, one of the greatest art collectors of the early twentieth century, resistant, had fled Paris in October 1940 for the French Riviera.
Arrested in 1944 and deported to the Neuengamme camp, he died in January 1945.