The other day, we wrote about a piece of Nazi-looted art turning up in a real estate listing in Argentina. "Portrait of a Lady (Contessa Colleoni)" was stolen by the Nazis from the collection of a Jewish art dealer and gradually passed hands and continents out of the public eye. Long thought lost, it turned up in a photo in a listing for a property near Buenos Aires just a few days ago.
While it's no secret that much of the SS top brass fled to South America following the Axis powers defeat, bringing with them their ill-gotten gains, the ins and outs of the whats and hows are often left out. That's where the ARCA blogspot comes in. The Association for Research into Crimes Against Art published a post detailing all the circumstances that led to how the "Contessa Colleoni" got where it is today.
When Germany began its assault on Holland on May 10, 1940, the Jewish dealer [Jacques Goudstikker] was acutely aware of the imminent threat to his family's safety and livelihood. [… He] took his young wife Désirée von Halban Kurtz, and their infant son Edouard, to IJmuiden in North Holland, where the family boarded the SS Bodegraven, a ship docked at the port city departing for England. […] Unable to transport his gallery's paintings with him, Goudstikker carried a neatly typed inventory of his property in a black leather notebook.
Goudstikker died during the escape and the Nazis quickly looted his collection. From there it came into the possession of Friedrich Gustav Kadgien, SS officer, lawyer and Göring's liaison for Swiss banks. When he fled Europe, he used his connections to bring his loot with him to Central America.
Kadgien did very well for himself in Argentina, quickly acquiring citizenship to avoid extradition and purchasing a piece of land the size of Berlin. He remarried, bred horses, founded social groups and went into business, the details of which are a little… foggy.
Some speculate that the German bon vivant's wealth came from laundering the German war chest and that he financed coups in Colombia (1953) and Guatemala (1954), using the proceeds from confiscated diamond taken from their owners in Antwerp during the war.
Kadgien died, without prosecution and exorbitantly wealthy in Argentina at the age of 71. His daughter is now selling her father's property.
Other articles on the Kadgien loot speculate that he was in possession of two paintings. But ARCA believes there are three.
I was also able to discover a third painting, which may be a match to a painting by one of the most important portrait painters of the French Baroque. That artwork was stolen from a museum in Germany at the end of the war. If this third identification is also a match, that would bring the number of suspect paintings tied to this Second World War actor to at least three.
Lynda Albertson, ARCA
The rest of the blog is equally thorough and fascinating.
