A real estate listing in Argentina shook the art world last month when it revealed a painting hanging in pride of place in the living room was actually an Italian Old Master stolen by the Nazis.
Art buffs say it highlights how other important works by luminaries including Vincent Van Gogh, Raphael and Monet suffered the same fate and are still being illegally hoarded by non-rightful owners.
The Argentine artwork — “Portrait of a Lady” by 18th century Italian artist Giuseppe Vittore Ghislandi — could be worth more than $500,000.
It went “missing” at the end of the Second World War and turned up in the seaside resort home of Patricia Kadgien, daughter of Nazi officer Friedrich Gustav Kadgien.
In addition to that painting, Argentine authorities found 22 other works, including some by Henri Matisse, during multiple raids on homes connected to Patricia Kadgien.
“There is a lot of Nazi looted art throughout the world that has been concealed from public view,” said Jonathan Petropoulos, a professor of European history at Claremont McKenna College in California and the author of the 2021 book “Goering’s Man in Paris: The Story of a Nazi Art Plunderer and His World.”
He commended the find — by dogged Dutch investigative journalist Cyril Rosman, who has spent a decade searching for the storied collection of Dutch art dealer Jacques Goudstikker — but the picture is just one of an estimated 100,000 valuable works of art looted by the Nazis which remain unaccounted for.
“There have been restitution claims for famous artworks in museums, but a far greater number of looted and non-restituted works remain in private hands around the world,” he said.
Among the most valuable missing works is Raphael’s “Portrait of a Young Man.”
That piece, painted by the Italian master between 1513 and 1514, was looted by the Nazis from the Princes Czatroyski Museum in Krakow, Poland and was last seen at a German castle in 1945, according to a list of missing Nazi loot compiled by the Monuments Men and Women Foundation, a nonprofit that works to help recover art stolen by the Nazis.
Individual works by Raphael have sold at auction for tens of millions of dollars.
Many paintings by Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele are also missing, including “Boats Mirrored in the Water,” one of more than 80 of the artist’s works expropriated by the Nazis from their owner, the Austrian-Jewish cabaret performer Fritz Grunbaum, according to the foundation.
Grunbaum died at the Dachau concentration camp in 1941. Recently recovered Schiele works have also fetched millions at auction.
In addition, Vincent van Gogh’s “The Painter on the Way to Tarascon,” is missing. It was painted in 1888 and last seen in 1945 at the Neu-Stassfurt salt mine, where the Nazis stored stolen works to protect them from Allied bombing raids.
The painting by the Dutch master could fetch more than $100 million. “Orchard with Cypresses,” painted in the same year by Van Gogh fetched $117 million at auction — a record for the artist — in 2022.
Some of the other missing paintings include works by some of the most recognizable names in 19th and 20th century art, including Edgar Degas, Auguste Rodin,Claude Monet and Camille Pissaro.
Although most of the pillaging was conducted by high-ranking officials, such as Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and Gestapo head Hermann Goering, some pieces were also taken by lower ranking functionaries, Petropoulos said.
He helped compile the list of missing artworks stolen by the Nazis for the Presidential Commission on Holocaust Assets, created by President Bill Clinton in 2000. The commission found the Nazis stole more than 600,000 artworks during their 12 years in power.
“Portrait of a Lady” was in the collection of Jacques Goudstikker, a Jewish art dealer in Amsterdam whose trove of 1,400 works was looted when the German army invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, according to historians.
It was acquired by Kadgien in 1944 from the Goudstikker gallery in Amsterdam. At that time he was in charge of securing stolen Jewish assets to sell and rebuild Germany’s military arsenal.
Goudstikker died after a shipboard accident when he tried to flee to England in May, 1940.
Kadgien’s daughter Patricia, 59, and her husband Juan Carlos Cortegoso,62, were charged by local authorities with “concealment” of the artwork earlier this month after they allegedly hid it, replacing it with a tapestry following inquiries by Rosman.
Their lawyer then handed over the painting to authorities last week, according to press reports.
Still, Kadgien and her husband face up to six years in prison if they are found guilty of hiding the works.
Kadgien fled Germany after the war, escaping to Switzerland and then South America with the help of business associates.
By the early 1950s, he was living in Argentina along with Nazi war criminals Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele — all of them protected by the regime of fascist leader Juan Peron and by 1954 he had a 200,000 acre ranch with a herd of 20,000 cattle.
Kadgien became an Argentine citizen and lived under his real name. He also had numerous business dealings with the Argentine government and helped Germans move stolen assets out of the country, according to a Swiss commission set up in 1996 to examine the country’s role during the Second World War.
He also sold armaments to the Brazilian military government and helped to fund coups in both Guatemala and Colombia in the early 1950s. He died in 1978.
For Petropoulos, who has spent decades shedding light on Nazi looted art, the action by Argentine police should serve as an example to the rest of the world.
“The Argentine police are the first since World War Two to employ criminal statutes to arrest possessors of Nazi looted art and to use the criminal proceedings against possessors to ensure the return of the artwork,” he told The Post, referring to recent legal cases in the US in which museums have been sued for the return of Nazi looted works hanging in their galleries.
In other cases involving Schiele works, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg seized eleven from US museums in 2023. Nobody was arrested or criminally prosecuted in that case.
“This case reminds us that private individuals in possession of Nazi stolen art also have an obligation to restitute,” he said.
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