likethebeer

Aside from just the fact that this is fricking awesome, it's like a quiz on "name that artist". So far, on first view I've gotten them all correct, except for a piece by Otto Dix.

Below the cut is most of one of the stories on this find, from Yahoo news:

"Mystery shrouds discovery of art trove stolen by Nazis"

Berlin (AFP) - The discovery in a rubbish-strewn flat in Germany of nearly 1,500 paintings including works by Picasso and Matisse looted by the Nazis sparked urgent calls Monday to hunt for their rightful owners.

The shock find was reported Sunday by news weekly Focus, which valued the works at around one billion euros ($1.3 billion dollars). Authorities repeatedly declined to comment on the trove uncovered in 2011 but scheduled a news conference on Tuesday.

However German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said Berlin had been aware of the case for "several months" and was assisting an investigation by public prosecutors with experts in Nazi-era stolen art. He said he was unaware of any restitution demands.

Hundreds of the modernist masterpieces are believed to have been stolen by the Nazis from Jewish collectors or seized as part of crackdowns on "degenerate art".

"I think it's the biggest single find of Holocaust pictures that there's been for years, but it's still a tiny fraction of the total number of pictures that we're looking for," Julian Radcliffe, chairman of the London-based Art Loss Register, which runs an international database of stolen and missing works, told AFP.

Investigators came upon the paintings during a 2011 search of an apartment belonging to the elderly son of art collector Hildebrand Gurlitt, who had acquired them during the 1930s and 1940s, according to Focus.

The search was carried out because the son, Cornelius Gurlitt, was caught by customs authorities on a train from Switzerland to Munich with a large amount of cash.

The collection uncovered included many of the masters of the 20th century, among them Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Marc Chagall, Emil Nolde, Franz Marc, Max Beckmann and Max Liebermann.

A person who was present at the search told AFP that trash and discarded food packaging lay around the apartment and the paintings were stored on hand-built shelves hidden behind a curtain.

Gurlitt's father, despite having a Jewish grandmother, had become indispensable to officials in the Third Reich because of his art expertise and vast network of contacts.

Hitler's propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels put Gurlitt in charge of selling the art abroad.

However Gurlitt apparently secretly hoarded many of the works, and claimed after the war that the masterpieces were destroyed in the bombing of Dresden.

His son, a recluse without a job, had sold a few over the years, living off the proceeds, Focus said. For the moment he is only facing possible tax evasion charges.

The works are now stored in a customs warehouse outside Munich.
http://news.yahoo.com/germany-finds-1-500-masterpieces-looted-nazis-232003659.html