Top Art Looting Investigation Unit Red List Names (by Frequency)

FOLD3: digitized from the NARA microfilm publication, M1782
https://www.fold3.com/title/631/wwii-oss-art-looting-investigation-reports/description

In 1946 the OSS Art Looting Investigation Unit published its Final Report. The Report was accompanied by an Index of Names and a summary of findings called the Red Flag List of Names.

The Red Flag List of Names, while not exhaustive, is extremely interesting for network analysis because of its prosopographical approach, A name could be mentioned more more than a hundred times, with extensive links to others, or only once, with a couple of links.
The document was classified and basically unavailable for many years.

But today, nearly twenty years after the  Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, what is known of these Red Flag names?
How are they reflected in authority files?

Fabiani in France's MNR provenances

François Boucher

La Lumière du monde

François Boucher

La Lumière du monde

The name FABIANI appears twenty-five times in France's MNR (Site Rose-Valland Musées Nationaux Récupération), one time in the Linz Collection and eight times in the Art Looting Investigation Unit's Red Flag List of Names of suspects in Nazi art looting.

WWII Art Looting Networks: Göpel (Goepel), Wuester, Holzapfel, Lefranc, Mandl, Birtschansky and Bloch

https://www.fold3.com/image/291857322
National Archives 

Erhard Göpel was an art historian who worked as an art dealer for Adolf Hitler. 

Göpel's role in art looting was extensively documented by, among others, the OSS Art Looting Investigation Unit during and after the Second World War. His wife, Barbara, was also an art dealer.

The Göpels (or Goepels) are back in the news in 2018 as The Art Newspaper reports: "Widow of Hitler’s art dealer, Erhard Göpel, bequeaths Max Beckmann works to Berlin" by Catherine Hickley)

"Erhard Göpel was a key member of the Linz Special Commission, the team of dealers who purchased—and looted—art across Europe for Hitler’s unrealised Führermuseum, planned for his home town of Linz. Göpel was instrumental in acquiring the Schloss family collection in Paris after it had been looted by the Gestapo. The collection, assembled by an Austrian-born French Jew, included works by Rembrandt and Frans Hals. After the war, Göpel evaded sentencing and spent the rest of his career organising exhibitions in Munich."...

In 1944, Göpel travelled to the Netherlands and Belgium on an art shopping spree with Hildebrand Gurlitt, the dealer whose collection caused a worldwide media sensation when it was discovered in the Munich apartment of his son Cornelius Gurlitt in November 2013. During their business trip they visited Beckmann, who was living in Amsterdam in exile with his wife Quappi. As a victim of Joseph Goebbels’s campaign against Modern art, Beckmann had left Germany the day before the Degenerate Art exhibition opened in Munich in 1937. "

- The Art Newspaper, Feb 21, 2018

Art Provenance Research: Guilio, Luigi, Arturo and Ginori Grassi?

Giulio and Luigi Grassi: Holocaust Era Assets WWII OSS Art Looting Investigation Unit Final Report Page 164

source: https://www.fold3.com/image/232006580

The Art Looting Investigation Unit Final Report contains several mentions of the name "Grassi".

• Angerer, Josef (Sepp). Berchtesgaden. After Hofer, Goering’s most important buyer. Ardent Nazi, known to have had Gestapo connections. Member of firm of Quantmeyer & Eicke. Active throughout Europe, notably France and Italy. Contact of Reber, Ventura, Contini-Bonacossi, Ginori and Arturo Grassi. Was under temporary house arrest at Berchtesgaden, house of Fritz Goernnert, autumn 1945

• Grassi, Dr. Zurich. Official of the Schweizer Kantonal Bank. Special contact of Wendland.

• Grassi, Giulio and Luigi. Florence, Via Cavour 106. Established Florentine art dealers. Trafficked heavily with German officials and dealers, particularly Hofer, Angerer and Posse. Sold considerable quantity of furniture to Contini.

• Sestieri, Dr Ettoro. Rome, Lungetevere Oberdan. Dealer. Historian. Director of Barberini Gallery. Worked with Grassi and Morandotti who introduced him to Hofer.

• Wallerstein, Dr Victor. Florence, viale Manfredo Fanti 109. German Jewish refugee dealer, whose brother is an orchestra leader in New York. Middleman for Hofer in Florence. Contact of Contini-Bonacossi, Ventura and Grassi.

However the Red Flag Names Index only mentions a Dr, and the brothers, Giulio and Luigi Grassi. There is no mention of Ginori and Arturo Grassi.

Grassi, Dr. 131 CIR 2; DIR 9; Miedl Report III.

Grassi, Giulio 159 CIR 2; DIR 9

Grassi, Luigi 159 CIR 2; DIR 9
The brothers Guilio and Luigi are also mentioned in the Goering Report (ALIU CIR 2)

Who, one wonders, are Ginori and Arturo Grassi?
Are they also brothers? What might be their relation to Giulio and Luigi?

---

The site Grassistudio provides clarification:


By 1900, Prof. Luigi Grassi was already heading his own well-established gallery in Florence, Italy, having earlier collaborated with his uncle Costantini, a dealer active there since the 1860s.  As a young man, however, Luigi had been trained at the Rome Academy and actually began his career as a paintings restorer at the Uffizi....


 “Luigi Grassi and Sons” became a requisite stop for any connoisseur traveling to Florence during the 1920s and 30s:...


After Luigi’s death in 1937, the gallery remained active until the early 1950s, managed by Prof. Grassi’s   two sons, Giulio and Arturo....



Several museums, particularly Detroit, effected important acquisitions through Arturo Grassi.

Arturo’s two sons, Luigi and Marco, both returned to Europe after their education in America. Luigi has remained in Florence as a private paintings dealer. Marco trained as a fine arts conservator, first, like his grandfather, at the Uffizi, and subsequently in Rome and Zurich. After initiating a private practice in Florence in the early 1960s, Marco served as visiting and consulting conservator to a number of important private collectors, among them H.H. Thyssen-Bornemisza in Lugano, and Norton Simon, in Pasadena. Since 1974, he has been active mostly in New York.


According to the above, the relations are:


Prof Luigi Grassi (d.1937) ==> sons Giulio and Arturo ==> sons Luigi and Marco.


(There doesn't seem to be any mention of a Ginori).


How to reconcile the ALIU Reports and this family tree?


links to SOURCES:
http://www.lootedart.com/web_images/pdf/aliu_index_0712.pdf
http://www.lootedart.com/MVI3RM469661
http://www.grassistudio.com/Grassi-Studio-News-and-Events-DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=20&lg=en


Other References: