Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers Explained

Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers (1891–1978), born Sophie Schneider, was a German art historian, patron of the avant-garde, author, and art collector.

Biography

Küppers, née Schneider, was born in Kiel, Germany in 1891, the daughter of Christian and Mathilde Schneiders.[1] She studied art history at university where she met her first husband, Paul Erich Küppers, who was the artistic director of the Kestner Society in Germany.They had two children. After he died in the flu epidemic in 1922, Küppers, now a widow, met the Russian artist El Lissitzky and married him.[2]

In 1927 Küppers moved to the Soviet Union and collaborated on a number of large-scale exhibition projects with her second husband, artist and designer El Lissitzky.

She later wrote El Lissitzky: Life, Letters, Texts (1967). Before moving to the Soviet Union she loaned some thirteen works, including a Paul Klee painting, Swamp Legend, to the Provinzial Museum in Hanover. In 1937 the Nazis seized the loaned works from the museum as part of their "degenerate art" campaign. The Nazis sold the works abroad for foreign currency, and the Küppers-Lissitzky collection was dispersed throughout the world.

In 1944, three years after Lissitzky died, Küppers was deported as an enemy foreigner to Novosibirsk, where she lived for the next thirty-four years.[3] [4]

Claims for restitution for Nazi-looted art

After several changes of ownership, the Klee painting (Swamp Legend) ended up in Munich's Lenbachhaus Museum, where in 2015 it was under protracted legal action from the heirs of Lissitzky-Küppers for its restitution.[5] An agreement was finally reached in 2017 for the Museum to retain the painting but for compensation (estimated at between €2–4 million, or $2.33–4.65 million) to be paid to the heirs of the original owner.[6] [7]

In 2001 the Kiyomizu Sannenzka Museum in Kyoto, Japan restituted a watercolor entitled "Deserted Square of an Exotic Town", 1921, by Paul Klee that had been stolen by the Nazis from Sophie Küppers-Lissitzky.[8]

In December 2021, the heirs of Piet Mondrian filed a lawsuit against the Philadelphia Museum of art for Composition with Blue, which the artist had consigned to Küppers-Lissitzky when it was seized by the Nazis.[9]

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Sophie Lissitzky Küppers. 2022-01-16. geni_family_tree. November 1891 . en-US.
  2. Web site: Sophie's Story: The Narrow Escape of a Painting by Paul Klee. 2022-01-16. www.metmuseum.org.
  3. http://www.andreageyer.info/revolttheysaid/k.html "Revolt, They Said". www.andreageyer.info.
  4. Web site: Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers - Monoskop. monoskop.org. en. 2017-08-17.
  5. Hickley, C. 2015. "The Munich Art Hoard: Hitler's Dealer and His Secret Legacy." Thames & Hudson. . p. 164-165.
  6. Web site: '26 Years Is Too Long!': Settlement Finally Reached in Battle Over Paul Klee From Nazi 'Degenerate Art' Show. Cascone . Sarah . artnet news. 26 July 2017. 27 August 2019.
  7. Web site: After 26 Years, Munich Settles Case Over a Klee Looted by Nazis. live. https://web.archive.org/web/20180501201346/https://www.lootedart.com/news.php?r=SKAOSX653111. 2018-05-01. 2021-04-29. www.lootedart.com. New York Times. After 26 years in court, the longest-running German legal wrangle over Nazi-looted art ended Wednesday with a settlement that will reimburse a family for the seizure of a masterpiece by Paul Klee that was once scorned as the work of a degenerate. For decades, officials for the city of Munich, citing a variety of arguments, had resisted returning Klee’s “Swamp Legend,” a dreamlike abstract punctuated by childlike imaginings of windows, trees and crosses. But after years of political pressure, the city agreed to a settlement under which the painting would remain in Munich’s Lenbachhaus museum but the heirs of the German art historian from whom it was taken would be paid a sum equal to its market value. “It’s a scandal that it has taken so long, and a disgrace that we had no alternative to going to court,” said Gunnar Schnabel, a lawyer for the heirs, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers, the art historian..
  8. Web site: Japanese Museum Returns Nazi Loot to Rightful Owner. live. https://web.archive.org/web/20101124152418/https://www.lootedart.com/news.php?r=NEC8P4296901. 2010-11-24. 2021-04-29. www.lootedart.com. The painting was part of Sophie Küppers- Lissitzky's collection of some 13 works which she loaned to the Provinzial Museum in Hanover in 1926, before she left Germany for Russia to marry the Russian avant-garde artist, El Lissitzky. In 1937, the Nazis seized the Küppers-Lissitzky collection, including the Klee painting, from the museum as part of the Nazi "degenerate art" campaign. The Nazis sold the "degenerate" works abroad for foreign currency and it is in this way that the Küppers-Lissitzky collection was dispersed throughout the world. Jen Lissitzky, the heir of Sophie Küppers- Lissitzky and rightful owner of the collection, has, with the assistance of the art historian Clemens Toussaint, been attempting to recover his mother's collection for several years and had, until recently, believed the Klee painting was lost. In a historic turn of events, Mr. Murata learned that Jen Lissitzky was looking for the painting and decided to return it to him..
  9. Web site: D'Arcy. David. 2021-12-14. Mondrian at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is Nazi loot, heirs allege. live. https://web.archive.org/web/20211214125122/https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/12/14/piet-mondrian-philadelphia-museum-of-art-nazi-loot-lawsuit. 2021-12-14. 2022-01-16. theartnewspaper.com. Mondrian at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is Nazi loot, heirs allege. In 1937 the work, which had belonged to art historian Sophie Küppers, was seized by Nazi authorities and eventually sold to New York collector A. E. Gallatin.

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