Revealed to the public for the first time, a 2011 search in the apartment of a Munich man suspected of tax evasion led to the discovery of some 1,500 works of art valued at $1.3 billion and thought to have been looted from Jews by the Nazis, the German magazine Focus reported over the weekend. The magazine reported that the artworks were found two years ago in the home of 80-year-old Cornelius Gurlitt, son of German art collector Hildebrand Gurlitt, but the discovery was kept under wraps while legal complications over the loot were sorted out. Until the discovery, it had been assumed that the works were lost or destroyed by British air force bombing during the war, as the elder Gurlitt declared they were ruined during the bombing of Dresden in February 1945. Among the paintings found two years ago were works by Pablo Picasso, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Matisse and Marc Chagall. In 2010, the German customs authority performed a routine check on a train arriving from Switzerland and detained Cornelius Gurlitt after finding that he was carrying 9,000 euros (about $12,000) stashed in envelopes. Their suspicions grew as Gurlitt did not have a declared source of income. His home was searched following the finding, leading to the discovery of the paintings, which were hidden behind a wall and next to piles of rotten food. Many of the artworks found had been looted from Jewish collectors, or had been sold by their owners for prices far below their value prior to their escape from Nazi Germany. Some 300 works were considered inferior by the Nazis and were transferred to Gurlitt's possession. One of the works, Matisse's "Portrait of a Woman," came from the collection of Jewish art collector Paul Rosenberg, who fled from Paris after the Nazi occupation in 1940. Rosenberg's granddaughter, French journalist Anne Sinclair, has fought for years to return looted works of art to her family. Focus reported that Sinclair was not aware of the discovery of the Matisse belonging to her grandfather.
