HAGUE, The Netherlands (AP) – A Dutch court on Wednesday rejected a restitution case filed by heirs of a Jewish family who owned a painting by Wassily Kandinsky who bought the city of Amsterdam at an auction in 1940.
The Amsterdam District Court upheld the ruling of the 2018 Restitution Committee of the Netherlands that the artwork entitled “Painting with Houses”, which is the collection of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, should not be returned to the family.
James Palmer, who represents the heirs, found the decision unacceptable. The heirs’ lawyers said they will appeal.
“If this court decision is not repeated, Dutch restitution policy will effectively be non-existent and it is likely that important art looted in the Netherlands will never be restituted,” he said.
“After many years of struggle, the Lewenstein family is very disappointed that the Amsterdam district court did not recognize the Lewenstein family’s rights to restitution of their property, which was misappropriated during the Holocaust,” they said. defense attorneys in a statement.
The 2018 ruling indicated that the painting was not stolen or confiscated before auctioning it, but also stated that the sale “cannot be considered on the one hand isolated from the Nazi regime, but on the other hand, it has been of having caused to a point the deterioration of the financial circumstances ”of the original owners before Nazi Germany invaded and occupied the Netherlands during World War II.
The heirs’ lawyers argued that the restitution committee included members “who apparently have a strong bias in favor of the Stedelijk museum” and ignored other legal issues related to the restitution of art sold by Jewish families before and during the war.
The court rejected the arguments.
In a written response, the city of Amsterdam, which owns the Stedelijk, said the court had ruled that the 2018 restitution committee’s decision “is not unacceptable for rules, reasonableness and fairness and therefore should not be to set aside ”.
“We are aware that this is disappointing for the claimants,” the municipality added. “This painting will be forever linked to a painful story. The relationship of our collection with the Second World War will always be important, we will continue to show information about it to the public, online and also in the gallery ”.