Argentinian officials might have found more art looted by the Nazis during World War II as they hunt down a famous painting in Buenos Aires.
The new works were discovered as officials searched for an 18th century masterpiece stolen from a Jewish collector by SS officer Friedrich Kadgien, who fled to Argentina after the war.
Kadgien’s daughter Patricia and her husband Juan Carlos Cortegoso were placed under house arrest after the painting went missing from her home in Mar de Plata, near Buenos Aires.
The painting, Portrait of a Lady, by Italian master Giuseppe Ghislandi, was missing for 80 years before it was spotted on a real estate website last month by Dutch journalists.
Prosecutors said they raided the homes of several of Kadgien’s relatives as part of the search and discovered two paintings from the 19th century in the home of Kadgien’s sister.
They also found a series of drawings and engravings from the same time period, authorities added.
The art pieces will be analyzed to determine if they were also looted by the Nazis.
Argentine police raided a Nazi heiress’s home to try and seize a masterpiece painting stolen from a Jewish art collector by her SS officer father – only to find it had hastily been replaced by a tapestry
Friedrich Kadgien was described as a ‘snake of the lowest sort’ by American interrogators
Friedrich Kadgien was a financial adviser to Hermann Göring, the right-hand man of Adolf Hitler and an art aficionado who plundered famous paintings through the forced sale of Jewish-owned galleries in the Nazi-occupied Europe.
Kadgien was never charged with crimes related to the Nazi regime during decades after he fled to Argentina. He died in 1978 in Buenos Aires.
Reporters for the Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad spotted the Portrait of a Lady. on a real estate listing for Kadgien’s home while searching for stolen artwork from the Netherlands.
The portrait, listed as missing on international and Dutch databases of Nazi-confiscated works, was one of more than 1,000 pieces stolen by Göring from prominent Dutch-Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker.
Acting on an alert from Interpol, Argentine authorities entered the house with a search warrant on Tuesday. To their surprise, hanging on the wall behind the green velvet sofa where the painting had been pictured was a large pastoral tapestry of horses, the public prosecutor said Wednesday.
Investigators also noticed a hook and marks on the wall, suggesting that a framed painting had been removed recently, the statement said.
Carlos Martínez, the prosecutor who is in charge of the investigation, told The Associated Press that he accused the couple of obstructing the investigation and ordered their detention at home for at least 72 hours pending a hearing.
It once belonged to Dutch Jewish collector Jacques Goudstikker, a successful art dealer in Amsterdam who helped his fellow Jews flee the Nazis before he died at sea while trying to escape to Britain aboard a cargo ship
Portrait of a Lady, a portrait of Contessa Colleoni created by Fra Galgario in the 18th century, was pictured hanging over a sofa in a real estate listing posted by Robles Casas & Campos
Martínez said Kadgien family’s defense team had offered to hand over the painting but has not done so yet.
The developments reopened a shadowy chapter in the history of this South American nation, which sheltered scores of Nazis who fled Europe to avoid prosecution for war crimes, including high-ranking party members and notorious architects of the Holocaust like Adolf Eichmann.
Under the government of Argentine General Juan Perón, whose first tenure lasted from 1946 until his overthrow in 1955, fugitive German fascists brought plundered Jewish property with them, including gold, bank deposits, paintings, sculptures and furnishings.
The fate of those items continues to make news as the painful process of restitution drags along in Argentina and beyond.
