Wolfgang Gurlitt

Wolfgang Gurlitt (15 February 1888 – 26 March 1965) was a German art dealer and collector, publisher and gallery owner.

He was grandson of the painter Louis Gurlitt, and son of the art dealer Fritz Gurlitt, founder of the Fritz Gurlitt Gallery, which he had taken over in 1907 and reopened after First World War. At the same time he worked as a publisher. A friend of Alfred Kubin and Oskar Kokoschka, he was one of the first gallery owners in Germany to exhibit the work of artists such as Lovis Corinth, Leon Dabo, Henri Matisse and Max Slevogt. Already in the early years of the business he ran into financial difficulties and had to take out loans several times. In 1925 he was unable to repay debts of 50,000 dollars and had instead to hand over artworks which had been offered as collateral for the loans. In 1932 he filed for bankruptcy. Although many customers had lost money and he was unable to pay his debts, in particular his tax liabilities, he continued to work in the art business.

The Berlin Regional Director of the Reich Chamber of Visual Arts, Artur Schmidt, successfully intervened several times on Gurlitt's behalf and reduced the amount demanded by the creditors, while Gurlitt ran his affairs in the name of his divorced first wife Julia. He also managed to conceal his partial Jewish descent until 1938, while other members of his family had already had to emigrate. In 1940 however the Gestapo were charged with an investigation of his case. In particular his Jewish lover and business partner Lilly Agoston, as well as his earlier business connections, aroused the distrust of the Nazis.

In July 1914, Henri Matisse had an exhibition at the Gurlitt gallery, for which Michael and Sarah Stein, Americans living in Paris and brother and sister-in-law of Gertrude Stein, had lent nineteen paintings from their collection. (Flam, 1995, pp. 229). The pictures were lost in the first days of World War I "and subsequently confiscated, or threatened with confiscation", but "they survived intact [even though they] never returned to Paris, resurfacing after complex and protracted negotiations in private hands in Copenhagen (where [many] can be seen today in the Statens Museum for Kunst)." (Spurling, 2003).

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