Narrated by actor Toni Servillo, “Hitler Versus Picasso and the Others” takes viewers on an incredible journey in search of masterpieces stolen during World War II. The stories of individual works are told by people who witnessed the looting, much of which took place during raids on homes and galleries belonging to Jewish collectors. The documentary reveals that 600,000 works of art were stolen from private owners, museums, churches and galleries.
The confiscated artwork was either kept by the Nazi elite, warehoused, sold or destroyed in bonfires. Few benefited more from this large-scale heist than Hildebrand Gurlitt, Hitler’s so-called art dealer, who kept many of the most priceless treasures for himself. Gurlitt’s son, Cornelius, inherited the cache upon his father’s death in 1956. A 1978 search of his home by German customs officials turned up more than 1,400 works of art valued at the time at more than $1 billion.
The Nazi raids were fueled by an outlandish misreading of “Entartung,” an already odious book written in 1892 by Dr. Max Nordau. A Jewish doctor of Hungarian descent, Nordau railed against the moral depravity of modern art. Dubbing it “degenerate,” he urged censorship of its relatively few creators in the interests of the greater good. Hitler dramatically expanded both the definition of “degenerate art” and the lengths to which he was willing to go to “protect” society at large.
In 1937, the Nazi regime staged two art exhibitions in Munich, Germany. One was aimed at stigmatizing “degenerate art,” which the party defined as works that “insult German feeling or destroy or confuse natural form or simply reveal an absence of adequate manual and artistic skill.” The other exhibition, personally curated by Hitler and aimed to glorify “classic art,” consisted mostly of German landscapes along with paintings of blond nudes and idealized soldiers.
In a speech a day before the opening of the exhibition, Hitler declared “merciless war” on cultural disintegration, attacking the “chatterboxes, dilettantes and art swindlers” who perpetuated it.
What may surprise many viewers is how the Nazi regime used its campaign against modern art to advance its antisemitic agenda. “It was more than just an obsession for art,” said Christopher A. Marinello, a lawyer at Art Recovery International. “It was an obsession to wipe out an entire culture. They were looking to destroy Jewish people.”
The Nazis weren’t the first tyrants to target cultural icons in their genocidal campaigns and, tragically, they haven’t been the last. Among the many cases in recent history were the burning of the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo and the bombing of the Mostar Bridge during the Bosnian War; the razing of mosques and other significant sites in Aleppo during the Syrian Civil War; and the destruction of countless monuments during Russia’s ongoing assault on Ukraine.
In many cases, citizens and activists have fought to recover or rebuild these cherished icons, and the response to the Nazis’ campaign was no exception.
The documentary ends with the ongoing search for stolen items and the fascinating story of how one painting by Vincent Van Gogh turned up at the Harvard Art Museums.
“Van Gogh’s paintings were branded by the German government as degenerate art and suppressed by the fascists,” said Sarah Kianovsky, a curator of modern and contemporary art at the Harvard Art Museums, in an interview with The Harvard Crimson.
His “Self-Portrait Dedicated to Paul Gauguin” was confiscated from the Moderne Staatsgalerie in Munich and sold at a Nazi-run auction in 1939 before making its way to America.
According to the documentary, of the 600,000 works of art seized by the Nazi regime, 100,000 are still missing.
Click here to stream “Hitler Versus Picasso and the Others” on Amazon.
-Written by Jeannine Guilyard for the June 2024 issue of Fra Noi Magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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