Inquiry finds ‘tainted’ Bührle art collection needs much more provenance research

The Bührle collection, on loan to the Kunsthaus Zurich fine art museum, is “historically tainted, on a scale that is possibly unique in Switzerland”, Raphael Gross tells SWI swissinfo.ch. President of the German Historical Museum in Berlin, Gross led an inquiry which concluded that the provenance research so far conducted into this world-class collection of Impressionist and modern art was “inadequate”. A scandal erupted in 2021 after the Kunsthaus Zurich opened its new CHF206 million ($230 million) extension, designed by David Chipperfield in part to show masterpieces by artists including van Gogh, Cézanne and Monet on loan from the EG Bührle Collection Foundation. Emil Georg Bührle, who assembled the collection and died in 1956, became the richest man in Switzerland by selling anti-aircraft cannon to Germany during the Second World War. He is also known to have profited from slave labour in Nazi concentration camps and to have bought art looted from Jews by Adolf Hitler’s regime.