Looted art discovered in home of Nazi’s daughter vanishes again

A painting stolen during World War II vanished again in Argentina. Photo / Robles Casas & Campos

A missing painting that was stolen during World War II and found in the home of the daughter of a high-ranking Nazi fugitive in Argentina, has vanished once again.

Portrait of a Lady by Giuseppe Ghislandi, an Italian baroque portraitist, was looted from Jacques Goudstikker, a Jewish art collector, in Amsterdam in 1940.

Its whereabouts were unknown for decades until Patricia Kadgien, 59, put her villa up for sale, with interior photos showing the 18th-century portrait above her sofa.

Her father, Friedrich Kadgien, was a senior Nazi financier, SS officer and aide to Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring, who fled to Buenos Aires after the war.

Argentinian police raided the home, in the coastal city of Mar del Plata on Tuesday, after the discovery by the Dutch newspaper AD on Monday, but the painting – on the international wanted list for lost art – had disappeared.

“The painting is gone,” Carlos Martínez, a local prosecutor, told reporters after the operation, vowing that the search would continue.

Police noted that the house’s decor had been changed since the real estate advert was posted. Two firearms were seized.

The villa is no longer for sale and the listing has been removed from the Argentinian real estate website. Kadgien has changed her name on social media, and has refused requests to speak to the media.

The painting of the Italian countess Colleoni is one of more than 1000 pieces of art stolen from the collection of Goudstikker, a successful Amsterdam art dealer who helped fellow Jews fleeing Nazi oppression. He died at sea while escaping to Britain in 1940.

At least 800 pieces from Goudstikker’s collection were illegally sold at an artificially low price to Göring, one of the most powerful figures in Nazi Germany, who was the head of the Luftwaffe and a known art collector.

Kadgien had acted as Göring’s right-hand man, helping to fund the Nazi war machine largely through the confiscation of Jewish assets in Europe. US interrogators described him as “not a true Nazi” but “a snake of the lowest sort”.

Kadgien first fled to Switzerland, where he controlled billions in Nazi assets, then Brazil and – like many of his Nazi colleagues – settled in Argentina in 1949. He died in Buenos Aires in 1978.

More than 200 of the looted works have already been returned to Goudstikker’s descendants living in the US as part of a Dutch government investigation in the early 2000s.

Until now, the last trace of Portrait of a Lady was a 1946 report that listed Goudstikker as the owner and Kadgien as the buyer. Goudstikker’s heirs are set to mount a challenge to retrieve it.

Researchers also believe they found another of Goudstikker’s looted paintings, by Abraham Mignon, a 17th century Dutch still-life painter, on a social media page belonging to Kadgien’s other daughter.

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