German Master Drawings From The Koenigs Collection: Return of a Lost Treasure - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9056624172 ISBN 13: 9789056624170

Publisher: nai010 publishers, 2005

Synopsis

Published with Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.

This publication presents 139 drawings and three prints from a recently rediscovered portion of the Koenigs Collection--one of the world's most important pre-war private collections of drawings, assembled in 1920-1930 by the Haarlem-based art collector Franz Koenigs (1881-1941). In 1940, part of the collection fell into the hands of German occupiers, and after WWII ended, they were taken by the Red Army as spoils, and were eventually rediscovered in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow in 1993. The 142 images reproduced here (50 of which have never before been published) have now been reunited with the greater part of the Koenigs Collection. Includes works by old masters: Jost Amman, Sebald Beham, Lucas Cranach, Hans Holbein the Elder and the Younger, Hans Baldung Grien, Adam Elsheimer, Wolf Huber, Augustin Hirschvogel and others. In his introduction, Dr. Albert Elen, Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, describes the history of the Koenigs Collection and highlights some of the masterpieces.

About this title

About the Author

Albert J. Elen has been Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings, including the Koenigs Collection, at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, since 2002.

From the Back Cover

This lavishly illustrated book marks the return of a lost treasure to the Netherlands. Part of the renowned Koenigs Collection in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, these 139 drawings and 3 prints were unlawfully obtained by the Nazis during the Second World War, together with a further 389 drawings. During the aftermath of the war this part of the collection disappeared. After a long quest a substantial share of the missing drawings was eventually found in Kyiv, capital of Ukraine. Subsequently, the Ukrainian authorities, recognizing the Netherlands' claim of ownership, decided to return these works of art to the Netherlands. The drawings are now reunited with the Koenigs Collection in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen as a loan from the Netherlands Institute of Cultural Heritage.
The vicissitudes of the missing drawings during and after the war are recounted in an absorbing essay by Albert Elen, Senior Curator of the Print Room at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, who has been involved in the search for the missing drawings for many years. Most of the recovered drawings are by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century German artists, including works by famous draughtsmen as Hans Holbein, Hans Baldung Grien and Lucas Cranach. They have not been on public view for more than 64 years. Fifty have never even been illustrated before and as such represent new discoveries. All are reproduced here in full colour for the first time, many at actual size, with revised material data and attributions. They are presented to the world audience to admire and enjoy.

From the Inside Flap

THE AUTHOR
Dr. Albert J. Elen (1955) is an art historian and expert in old master drawings (Ph.D. Leiden University 1995). During the last 17 years he has been involved in the search for the missing drawings from the Koenigs Collection in four successive capacities. From 1987 to 1990 he was the first executive of the Netherlands Art Recovery Project and author of the illustrated catalogue of the missing Koenigs drawings (1989). From 1990 to 1993 he was Curator of old master paintings and drawings in the Netherlands Office for Fine Arts (RBK) and responsible for the national collection of artworks recovered after World War II that had become state property, including 38 drawings of the Koenigs Collection. From 1993 to 1996 he was Inspector and from 1996 to 2002 Deputy Chief Inspector of the Inspectorate of Cultural Heritage, a directorate of the Netherlands Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. He was present at the identification of the 307 Koenigs drawings found in the Pushkin Museum in 1993; in 1995 he wrote the catalogue for the Koenigs exhibition Counterparts in Moscow. Since October 2002 Albert Elen has been Senior Curator of prints and drawings, including the Koenigs Collection, in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam. [2004]

Edition details

• Publisher: nai010 publishers
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9056624172
• ISBN 13: 9789056624170
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160
• Editor: Elen Albert