Posts Tagged ‘Sunday Times’

Thyssen Tussle Over Art Fortune (Sunday Times)

This article by Matthew Campbell was published in today’s Sunday Times:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article6968445.ece

Although it is indeed tempting to see this story as something of little more importance than a feature in Hola Magazine, there is a lot more to it, as you will see if you read my book, ‘The Thyssen Art Macabre’. For these are the same Thyssens who brought Hitler to power and were responsible for the slaughter of 180 Hungarian Jews at their Austrian castle in 1945.

And while many people believe this to be a world-class art collection, it is littered with fakes and second-class works, albeit brilliantly talked up by Heini Thyssen to the point where Spain paid in excess of $600 million to house half of it. (Contrary to the Sunday Times’s report, there was no ‘bequeathing’ involved).

The collection was only ever valued by one company: Sotheby’s, on whose board Heini Thyssen sat.

It seems highly likely that Tita Thyssen is frightened of Borja trying to sell any of the paintings, because the true value would then be revealed (as would the true ownership).

'Christ Among the Scribes', attributed by the Madrid Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum to Albrecht Dürer (1506) but described by the head of the Albrecht-Dürer-House in Nuremberg, Dr Thomas Schauerte, as an early 17th-century copy, a 'medley of references', showing a 'crass decline in quality' compared to Dürer's authentic works (see blog entry on 2 September 2009)

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