On January 26, 2024, the Cultural Committee of the City of Hanover unanimously recommended that the painting "Tête de femme" by Amedeo Modigliani (circle) be restituted to the community of heirs of the Jewish writer, journalist and artist Michel Georges Michel (1883-1985).
The work was confiscated in Paris in 1941 and is now being returned after being shown once again at the Sprengel Museum in Hanover. An installation by the artist Raphaël Denis, whose work focuses on the expropriation of Jewish collectors, artists and dealers in France during the Nazi occupation and who was able to track down a decisive trace in the case of the Modigliani, provides the framework for the presentation.
The artist Raphaël Denis (lives and works in Paris) is researching the expropriation of Jewish-owned works of art by the National Socialists in France. During the preparations for his installation "Les transactions Göring-Rochlitz" - currently on show at the Kunsthaus Zürich as part of the presentation of the Bührle Collection - Denis was able to identify an expropriated painting from the collection of the state capital Hanover, which is now kept in the Sprengel Museum Hanover. This painting, labeled "Modigliani, Portrait de femme" and signed "MGM1" on documents.
Denis examines the exchange transactions between Hermann Göring (1893-1946) and the German art dealer Gustav Rochlitz (1889-1972). Modigliani's "Tête de femme" was part of this exchange. In 1941, the painting was confiscated from the apartment of the Jewish writer, journalist and artist Michel Georges-Michel (1883-1985).
Main Image :Modigliani, "Tête de femme", 1917, huile sur toile, 55,3 x 46,5 cm. © Photo Raphaël Denis/Courtesy galerie Sator.