Paul Rosenberg: The Story of One Man's Life Through Art
During the Nazi occupation of Paris in the 1940s, the Jeu de Paume museum – originally built to accommodate indoor tennis courts in the nineteenth century – temporarily became home to some of the greatest works of Modern art ever produced.
Stolen from their owners – looted from vaults and seized from homes – the Nazis kept these artworks at the back of the building, gathered in a space known as the Room of the Martyrs.
Designated ‘degenerate’ due to being ‘un-Germanic’ or ‘Jewish’, such works were to be sold on, exchanged for ‘Aryan’ art, or, as happened to some, burned.
Timeless Travels Magazine
Winter 2016
© Sinclair Family
These Modernist masterpieces formed part of a much larger collection of stolen art at the Jeu de Paume; the majority, classified as suitably ‘Germanic’, were to be sent to Germany for display in the planned Führermuseum. Hundreds also ended up in the private collection of Hermann Göring, who was a frequent visitor to the collection.