Masks

Purchased from the artist by Karl Ernst Osthaus (1874-1921) for the Museum Folkwang, Hagen and Essen, Germany, 1911-August 25, 1937 [1];

Confiscated from the Museum Folkwang, Essen by the German National Socialist (Nazi) government and taken to the Schloß Niederschönhausen, Berlin, August 25, 1937-June 12, 1939 [2];

Consigned by the Nazi government to Karl Buchholz (1901-1992), Berlin and Madrid, by June 12, 1939-September 1948 [3];

Consigned by Buchholz to Buchholz Gallery, New York, stock no. 9935, September 1948-1954 [4];

Purchased from Curt Valentin Gallery by the Friends of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1954;

Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1954 [5].

NOTES:

[1] In 1922, the Museum Folkwang Hagen collection was purchased by the Folkwang Museumsverein and the City of Essen. It was combined with the collection of the Essen Municipal Art Museum and reopened October 29, 1922 as the Folkwang Museum, Essen.

[2] On June 30, 1937, Joseph Goebbels, head of the Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda (Nazi Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda), authorized the confiscation of “degenerate” works of art from German public museums. “Degenerate” artworks were defined by the Nazis as those works which “insult German feeling.” The Ministry targeted mostly avant-garde modernist works. By 1938, thousands of works of art had been removed from German museums and were either sold, traded or destroyed. Those works deemed to have “international value” were transferred to the Schloß Niederschönhausen to await sale. Nolde’s Masks arrived at Schloß Niederschönhausen in August 1938 (“Bestand in Niederschönhausen,” no. 550, Bundesarchiv, Berlin, BARch R 55/21015, Bl. 26-50). The confiscation of “degenerate” art from the German museums was legalized retroactively by the Nazi government on May 31, 1938. For more information on the Nazi confiscation of “degenerate” art, see especially Stephanie Barron, ed., “Degenerate Art”: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany , exh. cat. (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art and New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1991).

[3] Galerie Karl Buchholz contracted with the Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda on June 12, 1939 to send Masks to the Kunsthalle Basel as part of a group of paintings for the Kunsthalle’s purchase consideration. Masks was still in Basel on April 1, 1941 when Galerie Buchholz wrote to the Reichministerium that the Kunsthalle requested more time to raise money for the painting’s purchase. Bundesarchiv, Berlin, BArch R 55/21017, Bl. 130, 277. Basel did not make the purchase, and Masks was returned to Buchholz’s possession in Berlin. He stored the painting in several locations between 1941 and 1948. It remained in Berlin until November 1943, when Buchholz sent it to his longtime friend Karl-Heinz Brandt in Gramzow, Germany. In March 1945, the painting was transferred to the Rosgartenmuseum in Konstanz, Germany, where it remained until December 1945, when Buchholz moved it to his family’s estate at Überlingen, Germany, where his wife Marie-Louise was staying with their children. In April 1948, Buchholz brought the painting to his Madrid gallery, Galería Buchholz. He consigned it Buchholz Gallery Curt Valentin in New York five months later.

[4] Buchholz Gallery was renamed Curt Valentin Gallery in 1951.

[5] This painting’s provenance is listed in the Inventory of Confiscated “Entartete Kunst,” “Degenerate Art” Research Center, Freie Universität Berlin, EK identification number 3639, http://emuseum.campus.fu-berlin.de/eMuseumPlus?service=ExternalInterface&lang=en . See also Mario-Andreas von Lüttichau, “Bilder-Schicksale,” in “Das schönste Museum der Welt” - Museum Folkwang bis 1933: Essays zur Geschichte des Museum Folkwang, exh. cat. (Göttingen, Germany: Edition Folkwang/Steidl, 2010), 218.