The Argentine federal prosecutor’s office disclosed on Wednesday that a police operation had been conducted the previous day in a seaside village south of Buenos Aires. Here, documents and German engravings from the 1940s were discovered, although the sought-after artwork was not found, as reported by the Associated Press (AP).
During the administration of Argentine General Juan Perón, which lasted from 1946 until his ousting in 1955, German fascist fugitives arrived in Argentina with looted Jewish properties, including gold, bank deposits, paintings, sculptures, and furniture.
The fate of these items continues to capture attention as restitution processes remain ongoing in Argentina and other countries.
This particular case involves the search for ‘Portrait of a Lady’ by Italian Baroque artist Giuseppe Vittore Ghislandi, which Argentine authorities are attempting to locate.
Reporters from the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad recently encountered what seemed to be the famous painting in a real estate advertisement for a house believed to belong to the descendants of Nazi fugitive Friedrich Kadgien, while they were investigating stolen Dutch artworks.
According to Dutch art experts, the original ‘Portrait of a Lady’ appeared to be hanging above a velvet sofa in the living room of a chalet for sale in the Argentine coastal city of Mar del Plata.
The real estate agency Robles Casas & Campos did not respond to a request for comment, and the listing for the house priced at $265,000 was no longer available as of Wednesday.
During Tuesday’s search, prompted by an alert from Interpol, the international police organization, Argentine officials found a large pastoral tapestry with horses hanging on the wall behind the velvet green sofa where the painting had been sighted, the prosecutor emphasized on Wednesday.
Investigators also noticed a hook and marks on the wall, indicating that a framed painting had been recently removed, according to the same statement.
The official Dutch database of artworks missing from World War II, maintained by the Cultural Heritage Agency, identifies ‘Portrait of a Lady’, an oil on canvas, as property of the Dutch Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker before the Nazis took over his major gallery in Amsterdam when Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940.
An estimated 1,100 works from Goudstikker’s inventory were illegally sold to Hermann Goering, known as Adolf Hitler’s right-hand man.
The only surviving heir of Goudstikker, Marei von Saher, aged 81, has long sought the restitution of artworks stolen from her father-in-law.
In a landmark case in 2006, the Dutch government agreed to return 202 looted paintings from Goudstikker’s collection to Von Saher after a lengthy legal battle.
Von Saher’s lawyers told AP on Wednesday that she is “extremely grateful” for the newspaper’s work in locating the painting and is “exploring all possibilities” to recover it.
The German Federal Archives record the existence of only one Nazi party member with this surname: Friedrich Gustav Kadgien, who oversaw the movement of foreign currency, precious metals, and the sale of confiscated properties as a financial advisor to Goering.
Kadgien was never accused of crimes related to the Nazi regime during his decades in Argentina. He died in 1978 in Buenos Aires, according to local media reports.
