Evening lecture series organized by the working group Italy of the Arbeitskreis Provenienzforschung e.V. This year‘s online lecture series will focus on three case studies about Nazi-fascist provenance research and beyond in the context of Italy.
The third and final lecture in 2025, will be given by Nadine Bauer (Grisebach GmbH Berlin) on “Victor Wallerstein’s life in Italy and the fate of his art collection – a case study of an Ernst Ludwig Kirchner painting” (ENG)
The online lecture will take place online on 25 June 2025, 6:45 pm CEST. Link to join the online event: us06web.zoom.us/j/86971371991?pwd=YGscxLcjizdsHUMGN149AlUF31mKNb.1
The event will be moderated by Matilde Cartolari (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München/Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich). Technical support will be provided by Cinzia Cattin (Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin).
ABSTRACT:
When the Berlin art dealer Victor Wallerstein (1878-1944) fled Nazi Germany for Italy in 1936, he took several works from his collection with him. Later sources indicate that he sold at least three pieces in Italy around 1940 – to the art historian and Kokoschka scholar Michelangelo Masciotta (1905-1985). This includes a painting by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, which has been part of the Brücke-Museum collection since the early 1970s. Since 2018, the entire research project has been accompanied by a lengthy process of finding an appropriate approach to dealing with a work of art that was sold in Fascist Italy and not, for example, in the US. To better assess the circumstances of the sale ‘around 1940’ and in the hope of finding more specific details about the transaction, the Brücke-Museum commissioned research in Italian archives in 2020. The lecture will recap the research ideas and methods, and show whether and what results they yielded.
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