2024-04-16
This week we present another story from the "recovered art" category. This time, the article concerns a painting by a German painter with Polish roots, Robert Sliwinski, which went missing during World War II. How did the FBI contribute to the recovery of the painting?
The recovered painting "The Street with the Castle Ruin" was bought by the Silesian Museum of Fine Arts in Wrocław in spring 1939 from the Berlin Fischer-Dieskau family. It was shown to the public only twice - at an exhibition of Silesian landscapes by the Silesian Museum of Fine Arts, and then two years later at an exhibition of paintings in Bytom. In July 1942, the work was transported by the German administration from Wrocław to the repository of cultural property in Kamieniec Ząbkowicki in Lower Silesia. Its further fate remained unknown until it turned out that the canvas had been put up for an internet auction by an antiquarian bookshop in Pennsylvania, USA. In a flash, after confirming the identification of the object, the FBI secured the painting. The work was ceremoniously placed in the collection of the National Museum in Wrocław on 29 November 2017.
Robert Sliwinski (1840-1902) began his education with the idea of becoming a lithographer, and from 1862 he studied at the School of Art in Wrocław, later he also studied in Frankfurt, and then again in Wrocław. Interestingly, in 1870 he moved to Breslau permanently and opened a painting school for women there (at that time women did not yet have access to higher education). He signed his works "Sliwinski", it is not known whether he identified himself with his Polish roots. This painter most often created landscapes: from the Baltic coast, from the area of Frankfurt am Main and from Wrocław.