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New York (AFP) – A painting by Marc Chagall, which is among 15 works stolen by the Nazis and returned by France to the heirs of looted families, sold for $7.4 million at an auction in New York on Tuesday.
The painting was cataloged at an evening in which the Phillips auction house sold 46 works for an estimated $139 million.
The oil painting “The Father”, painted in 1911, was acquired in 1928 by the Polish Jewish luthier David Cender, who lost all his possessions when he was forced to settle in the Lodz Ghetto.
Deported to Auschwitz, where his wife and daughter lost their lives, the musician survived and settled in France in 1958, where he died in 1966 without recovering said cloth.
Meanwhile, the work has been displayed in exhibitions and it has been proven that it was Chagall who bought it back, probably between 1947 and 1953, unaware of its origin, according to Phillips and the French Ministry of Culture.
After the Jewish artist of Russian origin died in France in 1985, “The Father” entered national collections in 1988, before being sent to the Center Pompidou and deposited in the Museum of Jewish Art and History in Paris .
Earlier this year, the French Parliament unanimously approved a law to return to their heirs fifteen works of Jewish families looted by the Nazis. Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot called the law “historic” and “a first phase”, as “there are still looted works of art and books in public collections”.
David Cender’s heirs have decided to sell the painting, a common scenario “when a work is restored after a long time has passed”, because “there are multiple heirs and the work cannot be divided”, according to the vice president of Phillips Jeremiah Evarts.
Chagall painted this work, a portrait of his father, in 1911, the same year he arrived in Paris. “Electrified by the modernism” of the city, the painter’s works from this period are “rare”, as “many of them were destroyed when he left Paris to return to Russia in 1914”, he added, assuring that he had no doubts that “El Padre ” will attract museums and major collectors.
Phillips did not disclose details about the buyer.
© 2022 AFP
