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Eberhard W. Kornfeld

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Eberhard W. Kornfeld
Born(1923-09-23)September 23, 1923
Basel, Switzerland
DiedApril 13, 2023(2023-04-13) (aged 99)
Ostermundigen, Switzerland
NationalitySwiss
Occupation(s)Auctioneer, author, art dealer, collector

Eberhard W. Kornfeld (23 September 1923 – 13 April 2023) was a Swiss auctioneer, author, art dealer, and collector based in Bern.

Early life

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Eberhard W. Kornfeld was born in Basel on 23 September 1923.[1] After a commercial apprenticeship with a local architect he started to work in January 1945 for August Klipstein in Bern who headed the auction house Gutekunst & Klipstein dating back to 1864.

Art career

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The sudden death of August Klipstein in 1951 was a chance for the young Kornfeld to take over the lead of the house. The name changed from Klipstein & Kornfeld, to Kornfeld & Klipstein and finally to Galerie Kornfeld.[2]

Controversies

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Kornfeld was involved in numerous controversies. In 1993 a lawsuit opposed him and David P. Tunick, a Manhattan dealer concerning the authenticity of a signature.[3][4] In 2017, it was discovered that the son of Adolf Hitler's art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt had been selling artworks from his secret stash in Munich through Kornfeld in Switzerland.[5][6][7] Kornfeld denied selling Nazi looted art.[8] In 2018, the heirs to other Jewish collectors who had been looted, August et Serena Lederer, got a court order to compel Kornfeld to supply information about a Schiele painting they had owned.[9] In 2019 a judge ordered that two Schieles that Kornfeld had sold be restituted to the heirs of a Holocaust victim Fritz Grünbaum because they had been looted by Nazis.[10]

In September 2023 the Manhattan DA seized several Schiele paintings that Kornfeld had sold to Otto Kallir's NYC-based Galerie St. Etienne, "with no provenance whatsoever". After an investigation by Assistant District Attorney Matthew Bogdanos, Chief of the Antiquities Trafficking Unit, Assistant District Attorney Edward Smith, Investigative Analyst Hilary Chassé, and Special Agents Megan Buckley and Robert Mancene of Homeland Security Investigations, "all seven drawings were seized and voluntarily surrendered by the holding institutions and estates after they were presented with evidence that they were stolen by the Nazis.[11] The Art Institute of Chicago refused, citing Kornfeld's story that he had purchased the Schiele known as The Russian Prisoner legally and denying evidence that Kornfeld had forged the signature of Mathilde Lukacs on a document. In February 2024, the Manhattan DA filed a 160 page motion accusing the Art Institute of Chicago of "willful blindess" and detailing the evidence that Kornfeld had falsified the provenance in order to conceal the sale of art looted from the Jewish Holocaust victim Fritz Grünbuaum.[12][13]

Philanthropy

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Kornfeld donated artworks to several museums, including the National Gallery of Art,[14] the Norton Simon Museum,[15] the Calder Foundation,[16] the MoMa,[17] and the Kunstmuseum Basel.[18]

Death

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Kornfeld died in Ostermundigen on 13 April 2023, at the age of 99.[19]

Distinctions

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Literature

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  • Christine Ekelhart, Klaus Albrecht Schröder: Wege der Moderne: Aus der Sammlung Eberhard W. Kornfeld. Brandstätter, Vienna/Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-85033-264-4.
  • Eberhard W. Kornfeld: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner: Nachzeichnung seines Lebens. Katalog der Sammlung Kirchner-Haus Davos. Kornfeld Verlag, Bern 1979, ISBN 3-8577-3010-2.
  • Eberhard W. Kornfeld: Paul Klee: Verzeichnis des graphischen Werkes. Kornfeld Verlag, Bern 2005, ISBN 978-3-85773-046-7.

Exhibitions

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  • 2009: Wege der Moderne: Aus der Sammlung Eberhard W. Kornfeld, Albertina, Vienna

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Oberli, Matthias (4 April 2017). "Kornfeld, Eberhard W. in: Historical Dictionary of Switzerland (in German)". hls-dhs-dss.ch/index.php.
  2. ^ Fehlmann, Marc (2003). Hommage an "E.W.K.". Bern: Kunstmuseum Bern. p. 9. ISBN 3-906628-37-X.
  3. ^ Vogel, Carol (12 February 1993). "The Art Market". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 26 May 2015. Retrieved 10 April 2021. Sixteen months after his purchase, and eight months after the Art Show, Mr. Tunick said experts who had seen the signature questioned its authenticity. Mr. Kornfeld, a Picasso expert himself, insists the work is genuine. He offered to exchange it for a copy of the same print in his private collection that had once belonged to Nelson Rockefeller and had for years been on loan to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Mr. Tunick refused to make the swap.
  4. ^ "David Tunick, Inc. v. Kornfeld, 813 F. Supp. 988 (S.D.N.Y. 1993)". Justia Law. Retrieved 10 April 2021.
  5. ^ "Gurlitt's Swiss dealer breaks silence on his client". Expat Guide to Switzerland | Expatica. 12 October 2017. Archived from the original on 12 October 2017. Retrieved 10 April 2021. The art dealer and auctioneer, Eberhard Kornfeld, has spoken to the media for the first time about the reclusive Cornelius Gurlitt, revealing details about his trips to Switzerland to sell artworks, many stolen by the Nazis that he had inherited from his father. The 94-year-old Kornfeld said his client made regular trips to Zurich from his home in Munich to withdraw the proceeds of his art sales in cash from his account in order to pay his living costs. In his first interview about the reclusive Gurlitt – who died in 2014, a year after his secret trove of art first seized headlines - Kornfeld told Swiss Public Television, SRF, that he paid Gurlitt in cash or by cheque for the artworks he sold. Gurlitt, who had never had a job, needed the money to live on and to pay for medical treatment.
  6. ^ Hickley, Catherine. "Gurlitt's Swiss dealer breaks silence on his client". SWI swissinfo.ch. Archived from the original on 12 October 2017. Retrieved 10 April 2021.
  7. ^ "A Strange Bequest;The inside story of how a major World War II-era German collection ended up in an obscure Swiss museum". www.lootedart.com. Art and Antiques. Archived from the original on 6 February 2015. Retrieved 10 April 2021. As Cornelius grew older, he became increasingly withdrawn, spending much of his time closeted with his collection in his Munich and Salzburg homes. To supplement what little income he had, he traveled to Switzerland to sell drawings that he could easily hide in his train baggage. One of his buyers was Eberhard Kornfeld, owner of Galerie Kornfeld in Bern, the most prominent auction house in Switzerland. Kornfeld admitted purchasing four German Expressionist drawings from Gurlitt in 1990, works that the auctioneer said were seized by the Nazis as "degenerate art" from German museums and thus not subject to restitution. Besides his towering stature as a dealer, "Ebi" Kornfeld has exercised great influence at the Kunstmuseum Bern as adviser on exhibitions, fund-raiser and lobbyist. This has led to speculation that he served as an intermediary for Gurlitt in arranging the transfer of the collection to the Bern museum. Asked whether he in fact played such a role, Kornfeld replied, cryptically, "I might have had something to do with it, yes."
  8. ^ Artdaily. "Galerie Kornfeld denies 'Nazi-looted' art claims insisting it only bought legitimate works". artdaily.cc. Retrieved 10 April 2021.
  9. ^ "La justice genevoise condamne une maison de vente aux enchères". Tribune de Genève (in French). 10 April 2018. Retrieved 11 November 2023.
  10. ^ "New York's Appellate Division Upholds Return of Artworks to Heirs of Fritz Grünbaum". National Law Review. Archived from the original on 24 June 2020. Retrieved 10 April 2021. Shortly after the inventory, Grünbaum's entire art collection was deposited with a Nazi-controlled shipping company. Documentation as to its fate is sparse until in 1956, when several pieces from the collection, including the Artworks at issue, were put up for sale by Galerie Kornfeld, an art gallery in Switzerland.
  11. ^ "D.A. Bragg: Seven Pieces of Nazi Looted Art Returned to Relatives of Holocaust Victim". Manhattan District Attorney's Office. 20 September 2023. Retrieved 11 November 2023.
  12. ^ "Art Institute showed 'willful blindness' in buying Nazi-looted art, New York prosecutors say". Chicago Sun-Times. 28 February 2024. Retrieved 1 March 2024.
  13. ^ "Art Institute of Chicago accused of holding onto Nazi-looted Egon Schiele". The Art Newspaper - International art news and events. 1 March 2024. Retrieved 1 March 2024. Investigators attempting to seize a drawing by Egon Schiele from the museum's holdings filed a 160-page motion on 23 February that accuses the AIC of ignoring fraudulent provenance in its acquisition of the piece. The drawing in question, Russian War Prisoner, was purchased by the museum in 1966 and is one of several works by the artist sought by the descendants of Fritz Grünbaum, a Jewish cabaret artist and art collector from Vienna murdered by Nazis.
  14. ^ "Spray Can". www.nga.gov. Retrieved 13 December 2022.
  15. ^ "About the Collection". Norton Simon Museum. Retrieved 13 December 2022.
  16. ^ "For the Staircase (1959)". Calder Foundation. Retrieved 13 December 2022.
  17. ^ "Jean Tinguely. Cenodoxus. (1989)". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 13 December 2022.
  18. ^ "Rembrandt's Orient: West Meets East in Dutch Art of the 17th Century at Kunstmuseum Basel - Alain.R.Truong". Alain R. Truong (in French). 24 October 2020. Retrieved 13 December 2022.
  19. ^ Waldorff, Laura (14 April 2023). "Berner Kunsthändler Eberhard W. Kornfeld verstorben". Derbund. Retrieved 14 April 2023.
  20. ^ Eberhard W. Kornfeld ist Berner Ehrenbürger, 8. September 2011, Basler Zeitung
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