The art market under the Occupation 1940-1944

An auction at the Charpentier gallery in Paris, June 1944. © LAPI/Roger-Viollet.

Mémorial de la Shoah, 17 rue Geoffroy l’Asnier, 75004 Paris

In the summer of 1941, the French government began confiscating businesses, real estate, financial assets and art works from Jews across the country. Victims of both Nazi and Vichy laws, French Jews were stripped of their property and excluded from every sphere of political, social and economic life – a prelude to their physical elimination. Meanwhile, during the Occupation of 1940-1944, France’s art market thrived. Excitement swept through all the places were art works were sold: studios, galleries and auction houses. Everyone came to Paris to snatch them up. Selling, trafficking and trading art works, which sometimes reached very high prices, had consequences on the fate of works owned by Jewish art dealers, whose shops or galleries were ‘aryanized’.

This is the first time an exhibition has examined networks of the art-market microcosm under German occupation on a journey that includes concrete examples, unpublished historical documents and spoliated works of art.

To 3 November 2019, daily 10am-6pm, Thursdays to 10pm, Free

Closed Saturdays and 30 September, 1,9,14 & 21 October