The heirs of German banker Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy want to return the canvas from the Sunflowers series by Vincent van Gogh. His ancestor owned the painting before World War II. The lawsuit is directed against Sompo Holdings, one of the largest insurance companies in Japan.
According to The Art Newspaper, the collection of von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy who lived in Berlin, in addition to Van Gogh, included paintings by Pablo Picasso, Paul Cezanne, André Derain, Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Edgar Degas. First of all, it is known about the works of the impressionists and post-impressionists, contemporaries of the businessman.
A 98-page complaint from von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy’s estate states that he “never intended to hand over any of his paintings and was forced to do so only by threats and financial pressure from the Nazi government.”
Earlier, eco-activists poured tomato soup over Van Gogh’s painting “Sunflowers.” The painting was in the National Gallery in London. Read more here.
