The mayor of Marseille Benoît Payan has officially returned a painting by Derain spoiled under the Occupation -
Christophe SIMON / AFP
This Wednesday, the socialist mayor of Marseille Benoît Payan officially returned
Paysage à Cassis,
a painting by the Fauvist painter André Derain until now exhibited at the Cantini museum in Marseille, to the heirs of René Gimpel, a great collector of Jewish art spoiled during the Occupation.
René Gimpel was one of the greatest art collectors of the early twentieth century, resistant, had fled Paris in October 1940 for the French Riviera.
Arrested in 1944 and deported to the Neuengamme camp, he died in January 1945. In September 2020, the Paris Court of Appeal ordered the return of this canvas, as well as two others, on the grounds of the existence of "Precise, serious and concordant clues" according to which the three paintings are indeed those which have been looted and "whose sale is null".
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Marseilles
Jewish
Benoît Payan
Paintings