Hamburg Exhibition Reunites Works from Jewish Van Gogh Collectors Dispossessed by the Nazis

Key facts

• From Monet to Picasso: Jewish Art Collectors in Germany runs at Hamburg's Bucerius Kunst Forum from 11 September to 29 March 2027.
• Around 150 Van Gogh works were in German private collections in 1914; by 1939 almost none remained with these collectors.
• The exhibition focuses on 15 Jewish collectors, each with a dedicated room; together they owned more than 30 Van Goghs by the 1930s.
• The show includes 100 paintings and drawings by artists such as Camille Pissarro, Paul Cezanne, Edvard Munch, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Max Pechstein.
• Only one Van Gogh is in the exhibition: Girl with Ruffled Hair (June 1888), lent by the Musée des Beaux-Arts in La Chaux-de-Fonds.
• Kurt Oppenheim's Trees with Ivy (May 1889) was confiscated in December 1941 and photographed in 1942 with Hermann Göring at the Jeu de Paume; it is presumed lost.
• Cornflowers in a Vase, bought by Georg Hirschland in 1935, is exhibited as a fake after being excluded from the 1970 de la Faille catalogue raisonné.
• Of about 150 Van Goghs with German collectors by the 1930s, roughly 100 were Jewish-owned in a country where less than one percent of the population was Jewish.