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Karl Nierendorf

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Karl Nierendorf (18 April 1889 – 25 October 1947) was a German banker and later, art dealer. He was particularly known for championing the work of contemporary Expressionists in Cologne and Berlin before the War, especially Paul Klee, Otto Dix, and Vasily Kandinsky.[1]

Karl Nierendorf was born on 18 April 1889.[2]

He founded the publishing house Kairos Verlag, which produced the magazine Der Strom, and represented the work of Hans Hansen, and the drawings of Max Ernst and others.[3]

Together with his younger brother, Josef Nierendorf (1898–1949), in 1920 they founded Nierendorf Köln Neue Kunst in Cologne.[1][2] In 1921, he met Otto Dix in Dusseldorf, and in 1923, the brothers established the Galerie Nierendorf there.[4] In 1923, Nierendorf took over J.B. Neumann's Berlin gallery, following Neumann's departure for New York, renaming it the Galeire Neumann-Nierendorf.[3]

In 1937, Nierendorf moved to New York City, and established the Nierendorf Gallery there; and a subsidiary gallery, International Art, in Hollywood, the director of which was Estella Kellen (born Katzenellenbogen), sister of Konrad Kellen.[3]

In 25 October 1947, he died suddenly from a heart attack.[3] In 1948, the Guggenheim Museum purchased his entire estate for US$72,000, including more than 150 works of art by Paul Klee alone.[2][3]

In 2008 the heirs of Oskar Reichel requested the restitution of "Two Nudes (Lovers)" by Oskar Kokoschka which the Nierendorf Gallery had purchased from Otto Kallir in 1945 before reselling it. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, which ended up with the painting, filed a successful lawsuit against the Reichel heirs claiming title.[5]

In 2017 the heirs of Kurt Grawi made a restitution claim for a painting by Franz Marc that had passed through the Nierendorf Gallery in 1939.[6] After a contentious dispute it was restituted by the city of Dusseldorf in 2021.[7][8] Also in 2017 the heirs of the Jewish businessman and collector Eugen Moritz Buchthal recovered nine works from the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin which had purchased them through the Nierendorf Gallery.[9]

In 2023, “Die trauernde Braut” (“Mourning Bride”) by Otto Dix which passed through Nierendorf was the object of a search request from the heirs of Otto and Käte Ralf, a Jewish couple who was plundered by the Nazis.[10][11]

References

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  1. ^ a b "Karl Nierendorf". Guggenheim Foundation. Retrieved 5 March 2021.
  2. ^ a b c "Galerie Nierendorf: Ueberuns". Galerie Nierendorf. Retrieved 5 March 2021.
  3. ^ a b c d e "Nierendorf Gallery". Frick.org. Retrieved 6 March 2021.
  4. ^ Aleister Crowley: The Beast in Berlin: Art, Sex, and Magick in the Weimar Republic. Simon and Schuster. 16 June 2014. ISBN 9781620552575.
  5. ^ "Jewish Collector's Heir Loses Claim to Painting". www.lootedart.com. Retrieved 2024-11-16.
  6. ^ "Düsseldorf faces Nazi-era claim for Franz Marc's foxes". www.lootedart.com. Retrieved 2024-11-16.
  7. ^ Villa, Angelica (2022-01-28). "Franz Marc Painting Expected to Fetch $47 M. at Auction After Contentious Restitution". ARTnews.com. Retrieved 2024-11-16.
  8. ^ "Case Foxes – Grawi Heirs v. City of Düsseldorf". plone.unige.ch.
  9. ^ "Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation restitutes works from the Buchthal collection". www.lootedart.com. Retrieved 2024-11-16. Eugen Buchthal and his family were persecuted by the National Socialists because they were Jewish. The eldest son Hugo, who had studied under Panofsky, emigrated in 1934 to London, where he worked at the Warburg Library, followed by the daughter Anne Gerda in April 1936 and, later, the youngest son, Wolfgang. In May 1936, Buchthal sold the family residence at 22 Lindenallee, but continued to live there until he emigrated. He had already delivered a large number of graphic works from his art collection to Galerie Nierendorf in the January of that year. Some of them were acquired in the same month by the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. In 1938, Buchthal and his wife finally emigrated to London, where he died in 1954.
  10. ^ "The scandalous, scarcely believable journey of the little Kandinsky". lootedart.com. Retrieved 2024-11-16. "Die trauernde Braut" ("Mourning Bride") by Otto Dix turned up at Galerie Nierendorf in Berlin, but when Käte Ralfs tried to confront the owner, he refused to tell her where he'd got it from. It was sold at Sotheby's in 2008 for $62,500, with no mention in the provenance that it had once belonged to Otto and Käte Ralfs and came from the depot in Katowice, despite it being published on the German Lost Art Database, which has been publicly available since 2007.
  11. ^ "Die trauernde Braut | Lost Art-Datenbank". www.lostart.de. Retrieved 2024-11-16.
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