In a tidbit of trivial history, the Walker research mentions Blanche A. More work needs to be done on this painting for the period between 19. But the thirteen year gap in the provenance, when viewed within the context of the period-a dynamic effervescence in the dissemination and collecting of German Expressionist works, the growing internationalization of the market for such works, the dramatic shifts in ownership and control over such works resulting from the change in government in Germany, the ensuing exodus of these unwanted, condemned works to foreign countries-one has to be careful not to assume that Weck had continual possession of the painting “at least up to the time it is known to have left Switzerland in 1938.” By the same token, the Walker research acknowledges that Karl Nierendorf had a gallery in Berlin, before opening his new outpost in New York in 1936. That is not to say that anything reprehensible took place which affects the past ownership of this particular painting. There is always a likelihood that the Marc painting might have returned to Germany into the hands of another owner. There was a vibrant market before and after the Nazi seizure of power in 1933 which affected German Expressionist artists. Although that is a plausible theory, it is not necessarily convincing. However, it assumes that he was the one who lent it to the 1938 London Exhibit. The Walker’s research points out that Weck owned the painting at least through 1925. In any event, Weck was the proud owner of “The Blue Horses” by 1919. Glaser appears as a likely owner because of circumstantial evidence that he might have been the person who sold the Marc painting to Wolfensberger before the First World War. Weck and possibly, one German owner based in Berlin, Curt Glaser. Meanwhile, where was Franz Marc’s painting before the 1938 London Exhibit? According to the Walker Art Center’s fairly careful research, there were two to three owners before the Walker acquired "The Large Blue Horses": two Swiss men from Zurich, J.E. In addition to Mesens, there were two Swiss modern artists, Irmgard Burchard and Richard Paul Lohse, briefly married to one another, who contributed to the organization of the London Exhbit of "banned German art" which ran from July 8, 1938, to August 27, 1938. While Read was the titular chair of the Organizing Committee for the Exhibit, Mesens was one of its logistical and operational cogs. The 1938 London Exhibit was organized by an unusual assemblage of individuals, including, but not limited to, Herbert Read, a noted British poet and art historian, and Edouard Léon Théodore Mesens, an idiosyncratic Belgian art critic, gallerist, dealer, and remnant of a splinter group within the Dadaist movement, living in Brussels. That exhibit, a direct rebuke to the notorious July 1937 “Entartete Kunst” exhibit in Munich, Germany, was labeled as “Twentieth Century Banned German Art”, organized by the New Burlington Galleries. This German Expressionist work had been touring a select number of museums across the United States as part of a group of works dubbed “Twentieth Century Banned German Art”, itself a sub-set of a major exhibit of nearly 150 works of art banned by the Nazi Party that had taken place in London in 1938. Gilbert Walker acquired the painting from the Karl Nierendorf Gallery in New York. Franz Marc’s “The Large Blue Horses”, which he painted in 1911, have adorned the walls of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, MN, since late 1941 when Mrs.
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