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Kunstmuseum Bern
Photo: Peter Klaunzer / picture alliance / Peter Klaunzer/KEYSTONE/dpa
Two watercolors by the artist Otto Dix stolen by the National Socialists from the Schwabing art fund of the collector Cornelius Gurlitt will be auctioned on June 10 in Munich.
The pictures "Dompteuse" and "The Lady in the Loge" from 1922 originally belonged to the Jewish lawyer and collector Ismar Littmann from Breslau, the auction house Ketterer Kunst announced.
In December last year they were returned to the heirs who now wanted to auction them off.
The pictures have an eventful history.
Littmann acquired it in Cologne in 1924.
According to Ketterer, Littmann died in 1934 after attempting suicide.
His widow wanted to sell her husband's art collection.
A day before the auction, however, the Gestapo confiscated numerous works.
According to the announcement, the watercolors later ended up with the Nazi art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt, who in 1968 bequeathed them to his son Cornelius along with around 1,500 other works.
In 2012, the discovery of this collection caused a stir during a tax investigation.
The works were confiscated and checked for a possible looted art background, which could only be proven for some works.
After Gurlitt's death in 2014, the collection went to the Kunstmuseum Bern, which continued to conduct provenance research and restitution to heirs from previous owners.
scr/dpa