Free Republic

A treasure trove of artworks worth almost £1billion seized by the Nazis and reportedly destroyed in RAF bombing raids during WW2 has been found behind rotting food in shabby apartment in Munich. Experts have hailed the discovery of the 1,500 pictures, thought to have been lost or bombed, as a sensational find. The story of the lost masterpieces of such painters as Pablo Picasso, Renoir, Henri Matisse and Marc Chagall is revealed in this week's edition of Germany's Focus magazine which broke the story of the incredible find by customs officials. Art historians examining the collection claim up to 300...

If you needed more proof that art theft is a futile, dead-end job, look no further than the Kunsthal heist of 2012. After the theft of seven masterpieces worth tens of millions of dollars ——a Picasso, two Monets, and a Matisse, among others—it appears that the mother of one of the suspects said she burned their cache of high-priced art partly because the thieves couldn't find any buyers.

What do Dali, Matisse, and the streets of Manhattan have in common? Their cross section is embodied by the artist Peter Zonis, a surprising talent showcasing in a surprising venue, the subject of his art. To say he and his art are one, while being cliche', does seem to fit. Zonis' art is a perspective on the streets where he peddles his work. To be sure, the venue for display is intentional, not relegated. Among Zonis' following are Dustin Hoffman, Larry King, Robin Williams, Rudy Giuliani, Tony Bennett, Michael J. Fox, and the list goes on and on. Zonis' myriad...

PARIS (AP) -- A thief stole five paintings possibly worth hundreds of millions of euros, including major works by Picasso and Matisse, in a brazen overnight heist at a Paris modern art museum, police and prosecutors said Thursday. The paintings disappeared early Thursday from the Paris Museum of Modern Art, across the Seine River from the Eiffel Tower in one of the French capital's most chic and tourist-frequented neighborhoods.

.SNIPARTnews has reported that the White House has quietly de-listed a painting by Alma W. Thomas that it chose last month, among some 45 pieces borrowed from several Washington museums, to decorate the private White House residence and the West and East Wings. Titled, “Watusi (Hard Edge)” from 1963, the work takes a Matisse collage and, as Holland Cotter wrote in The New York Times, praising the selection, “shifts the pieces around, cools the colors down, and adds a title that refers to a Chubby Checker song.” “But through copying Matisse,” Mr. Cotter added, “she began to work out a...

A painting by the artist Alma W. Thomas, which had been selected to go on Michelle Obama's wall in her East Wing office, will no longer be mounted. "The reason why it was moved was because it didn't fit the space right," Semonti Stephens, the first lady's deputy press secretary, said of "Watusi (Hard Edge)," which had been borrowed from the Hirshhorn Museum. Stephens noted that the Obamas still "have a piece of [Thomas's] work in the residence. So they appreciate the artist's work." A Thomas artwork titled "Sky Light," also on loan from the Hirshhorn, hangs in the family's...

Yesterday, the NYT ran a story about the White House acquiring art. It included a slide show of a dozen artworks. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/arts/design/07borrow.html?_r=1 This Freeper took a look and found one abstract work he admired:"Watusi (Hard Edge)," by Alma Thomas, a longtime Washington resident who is an African-American painter. Photo: Gift of Vincent Melzac/Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. As I admired it, I thought it reminiscent, even derivative of a favorite artwork of mine by Matisse. I recall seeing that one decades ago at the Tate Gallery in London. A giant collage (about ten feet tall) from late in Matisse's life,...

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil — Gunmen overpowered security guards and stole paintings by Picasso, Dali, Matisse and Monet from a Rio museum Friday, using the cover of a Carnival crowd to make their getaway, Brazilian authorities said. The thieves entered the Chacara do Ceu museum as a samba band performed on the street outside and stole Pablo Picasso's The Dance, Salvador Dali's The Two Balconies, Henri Matisse's Luxemburg Garden and Claude Monet's Marine. The paintings were considered the most valuable pieces at the museum but their exact value was not immediately available, said Thais Isel, a spokeswoman for Rio's Public...

ALARM - Flights of works of Picasso, Monet, Dali and Matisse with the museum of Rio RIO OF JANEIRO - works of El Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Claude Monet were flights Friday in a museum of Rio by a group of men armed which moreover attacked foreign tourists, according to the museum.

In this second volume of her biography of arguably the greatest of 20th-century painters, Hilary Spurling recounts the life of Henri Matisse from 1909, when he was in the midst of consolidating the gains of his breakthrough Fauve period, through the two world wars, to his death in his studio at Cimiez in 1954. As with her earlier volume, The Unknown Matisse this new book gives us a down-to-earth portrait of the artist and his family while faithfully rendering a bygone era in which both art and those who made it, theorized about it, and bought it were taken seriously....

Okay, today our theme, for this fourth "class," is emotional expressionism. This developed in the first decade of the twentieth century and features Matisse, as a French Expressionist (or Fauvist, if you want to get really picky) and the two branches of German Expressionism: the Bridge and the Blue Rider. They are all inspired by the work of van Gogh and Cezanne which we saw in the last “lesson”: the emotional power of van Gogh and the strong composition of Cezanne. Henri Matisse (1869-1954) dropped out of a career as a lawyer. He became a leader of the Fauves (which...

Appointment for Return of Art Left in the Subway By COREY KILGANNON The man on the telephone called himself Paul and said to meet him this afternoon at 80th Street and Broadway. "No third parties," he said. And so the stage seems to be set for the final act of the case of the mislaid art. This is the affair of the professional art framer who left two precious pieces of art on a subway platform on Thursday: an original Picasso print and a study by Sophie Matisse, great-granddaughter of Henri Matisse. The framer, William H. Bailey, 63, who was...