The art gallery at the India Habitat Centre was packed to capacity on Friday night, as the arterati came together for the opening of Anjolie Ela Menon’s solo exhibition and the launch of a book about her, both titled Through the Patina. Dressed in a black and gold sari, a beaming Menon said, “I am so grateful to the team at the Vadehra Art Gallery who worked day and night to source my paintings scattered all over the globe and made this book possible. I think Suhani Singh is the hottest new book designer on the block.” Filmmaker Shyam Benegal launched the book that documents 50 years of Menon’s oeuvre. Artists Ram Kumar and Krishen Khanna were in the audience. Khanna remarked fondly: “I have known Anjolie for 60 years, even before she became a painter.” Politician Jaya Jaitly made a late entry, while artists Manu and Madhvi Parekh and Jayshree Burman stayed till the end. Guests were torn between listening to the speeches and appreciating the vast body of paintings on display. The event also turned out to be an early birthday celebration for Menon who turned 70 on Saturday.

Tags: Show and Tell

The vibrant colours of India fascinated this expat to take up a profession in photography. Having headed a magazine back home in London, Rod Hudson chose to make Chennai his home. He tells Liffy Thomas how he enjoys being a freelance photographer and cataloguing coins.

“I came to India in the mid-70s to become a photographer and the land continues to fascinate me,” says freelance photographer Rod Hudson. Be it Orissa, Chennai or Kodaikanal… every place has a distinct culture where the shutterbug in him gets active.

Tranquebar is one of his recent works. Be it doors and windows of different types, bazaar scenes, candid shots from the Indian streets, Mr. Hudson likes to take up different projects based on a theme. “I don’t like to do one kind of photography, I look for colours and textures,” he says, sitting in a cosy room where abstract paintings by his wife Gita adorn the walls.

His collection of photographs of trees native to the city, done as part of a project for a book, was showcased at an exhibition held during Madras Week celebration last year. In another edition of the Madras Week celebration, he was asked to display his collection of Madras Presidency coins. Plus, he does macro photography of coins and catalogues them, one of his challenging assignments.

Cataloguing involves identifying the era; history and value of coin and serious collectors approach him.

“Coinage in India fascinates me because every tiny emperor, how long or short they lived, had their own coinages,” he says, talking about his large collection of coins.

“It is difficult to take photos of coins with a high success rate. It has incredible detailing and the challenge is to capture the minute details. When you have done a fine job, it is like a thumb print,” he says.

Photographs of paintings of renowned artist Achuthan Kudallur for a catalogue are a few other assignments he is proud of. Mr. Hudson is next planning to capture the Big Temple, Thanjavur. “Photography is not that easy, you make many visits to a place and capture different angles,” he says.

Tags: Capturing India since 1970s

Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh's Speaking Tree

The group show, ‘Earth’, at Gallery OED brings together some well known names in contemporary Indian art

For a feast of Indian contemporary art, step into Gallery OED (Open Eyed Dreams), on Warriam Road. At its galleries in the basement and on the second floor, five artists are on show. Padmashree Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh, veteran artist who got the Raja Ravi Varma Award last year and Sudhir Patwardhan, the doctor-turned-artist, two of the biggest names in the field, are probably showing their works in Kerala for the first time on this scale.

Dilip Narayanan, who runs OED, says these five artists who belong to five generations offer their views on the theme in their works. Their ages speak their views, no doubt. But interestingly enough, the most venerable of them, Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh, has presented two works, which are digital, the latest entry to the art scene. His Speaking Tree is set in a golden background. “Only the golden background is hand painted, says Ghulam Saheb, over the phone, for a cataract surgery stopped him from coming to Kerala for the show. ‘The Speaking Tree’ is part of a larger body of work of Ghulam Mohammed Sheikh’s called ‘Kaavad’. A ‘kaavad’ is a travelling shrine that is part of the Rajasthani culture. On this joyfully coloured chinar tree, with a light of hope at the centre, (bright orange, yellows etc) a creeper grows all over it, so that the leaves of the tree and the creeper seem that of one tree. Sufi saints, fakirs, sadhus, the Bamiyan Buddha, a car, musicians, a figure that seems to be Kabir and a whole lot of people, a whole new world which merges with the leaves. What you see is a story of coexistence between communities.

The narrative style of the artist is evident in his other work, ‘Ark’. It is also a digital work (a fully digital one, he says) and the city sits lightly in the sky, colonizing it, with buildings and roads. The fringe of the ark in the sea seems a thick line but on closer examination, it is an arc of a city street, the buildings hardly visible to the naked eye. The question of the future of ‘Earth’ remains a question mark.

Series on Pokharan

The next in line in the order of seniority is Sudhir Patwardhan, whose 21 works, include bronze reliefs, etching, pastels on paper, canvas and acrylics. His black and white drawings are a study for young artists, for with just a few lines, thick and thin, he creates a flood, a picture of languor in a village scene. The series on Pokharan tells a story, of the change in the landscape in the area after ’87. “I used to live near the area and saw first hand the changes,” Patwardhan explains. Three bronze reliefs are part of his oeuvre here. Patwardhan, who had a few works shown at Chitram art gallery many years ago, has given up his medical practice fully now to pursue his first love, art. “There is no one style as such,” he describes his work. For a busy doctor to do paintings, drawings, paintings and indulge in sculpture too, a difficult time consuming past time, his heart must have been deeply into art. “I can now listen to music, paint leisurely,” he says of his life now. Cityscapes are his latest passion. A few are here on show.

The next generation is N. N. Rimzon, whose works fill the entire basement area. The huge egg shape that is the signature of most of his works happens in different avatars. In some, it is a huge black stone, at other times, the shape is in the sky or on terra firma. “The oval shape represents the cosmos and it has a spiritual content in totality,” says Rimzon. And in his sculpture, it a huge white fibre egg. The Stonehenge type granite pieces that are also reminiscent of the ‘chumadu thangis’ or ‘athani’ found near temples and rural roads form the chunk of his sculpture, called ‘Rock Temple’. It also has black swords thrown in for effect. In his paintings, black lines on a pale khaki background, his trees, like women, are graceful and curvaceous.

Changing landscapes

Rajan M. Krishnan, of whose four works, two are mammoth, has curated this art exhibition. He deals with changing rural landscapes, the paddy fields, the plants that nobody wants. There is a certain luminosity in the chunky works that rivet your attention, in the way he uses colour boldly, though they are not of the bright variety, cold blues and pale greens with white and dark browns, bordering on a deep grey.

Sujith S.N, in his late twenties represents the youngest generation, and his big work, rightly enough, seems to be inspired by Google Earth. The map, like a Google one, is dotted by tiny landmarks and the lad from Palakkad, who has lived in Hyderabad and is now based in Mumbai, sees the city in different lights, rosy on one side and dark on the other. “But I live in Mumbai now and work closely with a gallery there,” he remarks. Apart from the big two, he has eight small works in the show, all showing the different facets of a changing landscape, therefore qualifying to be in the ‘Earth’ show.

Not all the works are for sale, for some have been brought just for the show from collectors. The show will till August 14.

Tags: The many meanings of earth and change

A work on display at "Going Going Gone"

Young artist Manjunath Kamath will be painting on the walls of the gallery and not the canvas in his upcoming show.

Going going gone…. Things like these don’t happen every other day, but then art has always been about the non-conventional. Whether it is a senior artist like Jahangir Sabawala or a contemporary artist like Bharti Kher — whose sculpture “The Skin Speaks a Language of its Own” fetched Rs.7 crore at the Sotheby’s auction last month, making her the country’s ‘top-selling woman artist’ — it is firstly about the language, and, of course a good idea to back it.

Now, Manjunath Kamath like many of his peers, chases the quirk, breaks down set notions in his upcoming ‘show’ at Gallery Espace next month. Well, the Mangalore-born artist does that all the time, but it’s almost like going one step further. In his next project, the artist shifts his studio to Gallery Espace in New Friends Colony for a week, drawing live in front of viewers.

No canvases

There won’t be any canvases to see or buy because “you can’t buy what’s drawn on the walls of a gallery. One should come and just enjoy it and celebrate the moment like in a Durga Puja or Dussehra,” says the artist, who is known to traverse various disciplines like drawing, painting, sculpture and video.

The idea of making a 2000-sq-ft gallery his canvas is rooted in the belief that “viewers don’t see a painting. They only look at it these days, always either through a camera or a mobile,” feels Kamath. In equal measure, it stems from the need to break down the wall that exists between an artist and a viewer, who is not necessarily a buyer. “The process is not seen and experienced, making it look like a product coming out of a factory. How an artist gets an idea, how he interprets it doesn’t reach people,” adds Kamath.

At the gallery, the young artist will work just like he operates in his studio based in Hauz Khas Village. “I haven’t decided what I will paint. Whatever idea I will get then, maybe something that has got triggered by an interaction with a guest, I will paint it on any of the walls. It could have influence of murals of Kerala and be illustrative in nature,” explains Kamath, who says the idea is soaked in his old habit of scribbling anywhere anytime. Sharing that private space with viewers sauntering in unannounced also poses a challenge for Kamath or for any other artist. “A lot of artists say, we don’t care about who sees it, but somewhere we are always conscious about our work being seen by the people. Would I paint for myself or to please the viewers, how conscious would I be of their presence are a few things…I don’t know…,” Manjunath trails off.

Consumerism, environment, illusion…young artists come together to engage with a host of ideas in the realm of visual arts in Gallery Espace’s ongoing show ‘Going Going Gone’. But what binds them together is the commentary they all make on the fragile world with fast lives.

Agitated by the negative news “almost celebrated in newspapers”, Bhubaneswar-based Kanta Kishor Moharana has been creating newspaper sculptures in marble for the last 10 years but he gives them a positive makeover. “In the newspaper titled ‘Headlines Today’ the headline reads, ‘Let us Fight Terrorism’ instead of saying so many people got killed in this place. It’s all engraved while the gun which has been stuck to it with gum has been created in bronze.” The work hints at various externalities that have a bearing on the thought processes of the people. Ajay Singh Kanwal plays with the idea of ‘illusion’ in his work which has two wooden boxes wrapped in white canvas and onto them are tied ghunguroos. The boxes have an electronic motor inside and when a viewer puts a step forward, the electronic sensors in the work capture it and the wooden boxes start vibrating. “It is based on the old philosophy of when you want something and make an effort, the entire universe comes together to help you. But what is universe, it’s an illusion,” says the Baroda-based Kanwal who teaches at the Faculty of Arts, M.S. University, Baroda. Vinita Khanna’s blooms created from found material remind one of human interventions in the natural eco-system, whereas Sharad Sonsukale’s work hints at some imminent danger. Shubha Taparia’s photo-realistic works showcase the co-existence of two streams of life: pavement squatters against the high-end global luxurious brands at the famous Taj Hotel in Mumbai.

Tags: Painting on the wall

A work of art by Rajesh K. Baderia

Rajesh Baderia’s “Transcendence” in the city – A mix of spiritualism and mysticism, Indian philosophy, mythology and nature, the paintings play with colours.

Some eight years ago, artist Rajesh K. Baderia exhibited his works in “I am” gallery in Lajpat Nagar along with a stalwart like Amrut Patel. The Jabalpur-born engineer knew he wasn’t among the favourites with connoisseurs and media; the reason was simple – he wasn’t known enough. But his meditating Krishna invariably attracted one and all. Today, he is not only invited to countries like the U.S., France and Spain to exhibit his abstract forms, but galleries which initially “humiliated and ignored” him, as he puts it, are now keen to display his works.

Some 50 group and 10 solo shows old, Baderia’s new exhibition “Transcendence” is on view at the newly opened Renaissance Museum and Arts. A mix of spiritualism and mysticism, Indian philosophy, mythology and nature, the paintings play with colours. This show has seven chakras, nine planets, five elements and his ever present Krishna in all new shades. What separates his works from many others is the luminous effect. His upbringing in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, contributes immensely to his vibrant creations — with their dancing peacocks in forests lush green during the rains, temples of architectural magnificence, and a mix of rustic and urban life.

Meditative

Baderia’s “Krishna” is not playful; he is in a trance, calm and meditative. Even a separation from Radha (symbolised by a flowing white veil) doesn’t deter him. “Scriptures say Krishna was a yogi too, though he took birth as a human being. I like to show his spiritual side,” reasons Baderia. His “Rising” depicts a hot red mass like a mini volcano. Bright light emanates from it and seems to pass through the frame to reach the viewer. His “Five Elements” in white, blue, red, green and earth hues gives the impression of melting ice bricks, each shining with a light of its own. A close scrutiny reveals Buddhist tantric elements in shapes of a triangle, circle, rectangle, etc. floating inside them. “Moon Matters” is a matrix of seven ‘melting’ chakras and nine planets with divine light as their binding force. These are represented through two simultaneous compositions to complete the thought. Says the 51-year-old artist, “I started painting since the age of five as I was influenced by my mother who used to draw. Engineering came later. My engineering background helped me draw (for example) a line or a circle just perfectly without using any geometrical device. My passion for VIBGYOR too, came from my science background. I never regretted taking engineering as a profession. See, even Leonardo Da Vinci was a civil engineer, then an architect. He joined the army later….”

Tags: Luminous ways

The 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore has triggered a deluge of cultural events and exhibitions worldwide. The sesquicentennial year has also been marked with coincidental events, indicating a flush of interest in his paintings and graphical adventures.

For all Tagore’s fame as a poet, novelist, musician, playwright and philosopher, it was an exhibition of the paintings of the “accidental artist,” opened by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on May 9, that set the ball rolling for the series of cultural events planned by the government of India.

This was immediately followed by the announcement that 12 paintings of Tagore would go under the hammer as a part of Sotheby’s annual auction of Indian art. The auctioneers described them as “arguably the most important group of works by Tagore ever to appear at an auction.”

The news triggered protests from art lovers in India, who demanded that the priceless works be acquired by the government. West Bengal Chief Minster Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee wrote to Dr. Singh, urging him to intervene. But the efforts of the Ministry of Culture did not bear fruit, and the paintings were sold for £1.5 million, three times the estimated price. While it was Tagore’s writings and songs that catapulted him to international fame, the Nobel Laureate believed that it was his art that allowed him to communicate with a universal audience.

At the inauguration of an exhibition of his paintings in Moscow in 1930, he said: “My most intimate gifts to you are my pictures…Let me hope that my pictures will be messengers of thought between us and bring us close to each other on the plane of harmonious understanding.”

Yet, his art, which has excited academic interest, has remained an enigma to many.

Most scholars agree that it was in 1924 that Tagore, at the age of 63, began to adopt painting as a medium of creative expression, though there were earlier instances of sporadic attempts at a few pencil and ink sketches.

“When the scratches in my manuscript cried, like sinners for salvation, and assailed my eyes with the ugliness of their irrelevance, I often took more time in rescuing them into a merciful finality of rhythm than carrying on what was my obvious task,” Tagore wrote in an introduction to a brochure of an exhibition.

“Rabindranath discovered himself as a painter in the pages of his manuscript,” writes R. Siva Kumar in My Pictures, a book of a collection of his paintings.

From an aesthetic transformation of the scratches and corrections in his manuscript, he started primitivist form-making, making bizarre zoomorphic patterns in black and white. Experiments with colours, the media and themes followed. In 1930, the first public exhibition of his works was held.

D.R. Kowshik, in a chronological analysis of Tagore’s paintings, argues that his interest in visual arts was there all his life. But it is in this period “when he came out of his shell to seek an audience.”

His encouragement of nephews Abanindranath Tagore and Gaganendranath Tagore and young artists Mukul Dey, Suren Kar and Nandalal Bose is well known. But his diffidence in picking up the brush himself until so late in life is not fully explained. As early as 1893, Tagore wrote to his niece Indira Devi Chaudhurani: “Very often I cast looks of longing, after the fashion of a disappointed lover, towards the Muse of Art. But alas! She is difficult to win, for I am past the age I could woo her.” It took another 30 years for him to muster the courage to woo her. Researchers Ketaki Kushari Dyson and Sushobhan Adhikary, with the scientific collaboration of Adrian Hill and Robert Dyson, have put forward an unusual explanation for this delay.

After a colorimetric analysis of Tagore’s paintings, they have concluded that he suffered from a partial colour vision deficiency — protanopia, in which red cannot be perceived by the human eye and there is a confusion over perception of red and green.

“Tagore’s colour vision deficiency almost certainly inhibited and delayed his development as a visual artist. He never had the confidence to take formal lessons in art,” claims Ms. Dyson in an article on their book Ronger Rabindranath (Tagore of Colours). She further argues that the influence of Expressionism, a style Tagore could adopt with a greater ease given his vision deficiency, gave him the confidence to emerge as a visual artist.

The lack of formal training in art that is speculated as the reason for this delay was also liberating to him. In a letter to William Rothenstein in 1934, he boasts “a daring technique and style that only an untrained and persistently impulsive dreamer can achieve.”

The fact that Tagore took so long to arrive on the scene as a painter did not mean that he was in any way less prolific. Composing thousands of works (the archives at Visva- Bharati, the largest collection of his paintings anywhere in the world, have a repository of 1,500 ) in a multitude of styles — pen-and-ink figurations, coloured productions with inks, crayons, pastels, vegetable colours and even varnishes, and finally his monochrome drawings.

A bulk of his creations was from human inspirations, including several self-portraits. He has a repertoire of faces — funny, cynical, sad, youthful, mask-like, resigned — as well as full figured forms which include even a few nudes.

“The phantoms of faces, Come unbidden into my vacant hours,” Tagore wrote of his inspiration in Chitralipi, the book of his paintings that appeared in his lifetime.

“He made experiments with male faces — some of them looking like distortions or caricatures…The female faces, on the other hand, were less amenable to such extreme distortions and were invariably gloomy, depressed and sad,” writes Jayanta Chakrabarti in a book culled from an art collection of Kala Bhavan, the department for visual arts at Visva Bharati.

The artist himself has not aided his audience in the interpretation of his works, desisting from even giving a title to most. “People often ask me about the meaning of my pictures. I remain silent even as my pictures are. It is for them to express and not to explain,” is what he famously said of his works.

Tags: Tagore: it’s for my pictures to express and not to explain

A day before her 70th birthday, a pictorial biography of leading Indian contemporary artist Anjolie Ela Menon covering 55 years of her career was released by filmmaker Shyam Benegal Friday in the presence of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s wife Gursharan Kaur.

The launch here was accompanied by the inauguration of a month-long retrospective exhibition of Menon’s art featuring 70 large-format oil paintings from her entire oeuvre of works, documenting her aesthetic evolution.

The illustrated book, ‘Anjolie Ela Menon: Through the Patina’, has been published by the Vadehra Art Gallery and authored by art critic and writer ‘Isana Murty’, well-known defence analyst C. Uday Bhaskar, who writes under a pen name.

At a time, when modernist abstraction is preferred by artists both in India and the West, Anjolie Ela Menon’s works have been rigorously figurative, sensuous, romantic and individualistic, the book said.

Releasing the book, filmmaker Shyam Benegal said, he had first seen Anjolie Ela Menon’s work ‘50 years ago in an exhibition on Gordon Road in Mumbai’. They struck him. ‘She later gifted a painting of Christ’s head to me,’ Benegal said.

Gursharan Kaur, who is an art connoisseur, said she was ‘very fond of Anjolie Ela Menon’s works’.

‘I like everything about her art. I can’t single out any particular aspect,’ she told IANS, when asked what was it about Menon’s works that moved her.

Menon was born in West Bengal to Amar Dev, a descendant of Raja Nabakrishna Dev of the Sova Bazar royalty, July 17, 1940.

Tags: Anjolie Ela Menon’s biography released as she turns 70

Ceramic wares on display at Sahara Art and Craft Shopping Festival in Coimbatore on Thursday.

“This is nice,” I mutter as I admire a black chikan kurta. I’m at Beauty Chikan Centre, where Aamir, a young man from Lucknow, is helping me choose from a wide selection of these intricately embroidered clothes.

“Madam, this is not nice,” Aamir instructs, as I look up in surprise. Urging me to follow him to the other side of his stall, he spreads out a beautiful, and sheer white chikan fabric. From this running material, I can tailor just about anything my heart desires. But Aamir thinks otherwise. “This is also not nice,” he says with a smile. Is he trying to make a sale or attempt a minor self-sabotage?

“These fabrics are nothing when compared to what our old masters create back home,” Aamir continues with pride. He promises to order the best from them, just for me. Aamir has won himself his latest fan.

Aamir, like the rest of his brethren at Sahara Art and Craft Festival, lacks in slick salesmanship, the kind you perhaps experience at upmarket stores in posh malls. But his cheerfulness and disarming honesty, are enough to create a lasting impression.

The festival, which has been on in the city for over ten days, has artisans representing different parts of the country. It is one that is eagerly anticipated, for the variety of arts and crafts. Sahara Handicrafts and Handloom Association, a voluntary organization, aims to provide opportunities for artisans like Aamir, where middlemen are discouraged, and greater interaction between consumers and craftspeople is sought after.

A good idea too, as you discover that such platforms are needed. Take Damodar, for instance. He has created artworks using every conceivable media. From silk cloth paintings, to water coloured furniture, Damodar and his family of twelve, labour for hours. He is from Rajasthan, and has been awarded by the Indian Government. But, as Damodar explains, “I sell this hand-carved and painted chair at Rs.1900. But other more established shopkeepers sell similar designs at Rs. 3300.”

It is a similar story everywhere. Like Humaira from Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh. Tucked away at the farthest end, the stall is occupied by impressive rot-iron furniture, created from mango wood. From intimate garden chairs, to expansive four-piece furniture for the living room, this stall spells elegant craftsmanship. The stall owner informs that the price of an aristocratic rocking chair is Rs. 4000. “Most people find this expensive,” he adds.

But, as the owner of a Rajasthani block prints stall explains, the basis for selling goods at relatively lesser rates is sound. “We sell our products in greater quantity, and this makes up for everything else,” he elaborates. Satisfied with his response, I move on to soak in the aroma of a stall with pickles!

You have pickles with jackfruit, coconut, amla, lime, dates, apples, red chillies, and even bitter gourd. There’s also the mixed vegetable, lemon chilli, Punjabi Mango and Hyderabadi pickle, and more. I get a taste of the delectable sweet mango, as I enjoy a chat with the stall owner. “We’ve learnt the recipes from our women, including our grandmothers,” he says. But, it is the men who prepare in bulk. “That’s because of the large quantities. On a given day, we make 80-90 tonnes!” His eyes twinkle as I balk at the sheer numbers.

I’m just as floored at the stall from Bombay. It’s all about innovation here, with covers for just about every household appliance! Made with cotton and rexin, discover DVD covers, mixie covers, food processor covers, LCD television covers, remote covers, covers for even washing machines and fridge handles!

At Rupam Digestives and Churans, I am delighted by the quirky names given to some of these. Like the special milky supari! There’s Ram Laddu too, along with Jet Airlines Imli, and Dilkhush Mukhwas (a mouth freshener, if you are a stickler for sedate names)

From Hyderabadi pearls, to cushions and bed covers from Varanasi, and brassware with enamel work from Moradabad, the festival carries it all. At Asrar Ali’s stall, discover handloom carpets, with designs inspired from Kabul and Persia. Costume jewels and beads, tribal wall hangings, and usual suspects like the evergreen Madhubani paintings – it’s all there.

As I leave, I glance one last time at the colourful display of earthenware, right at the entrance. It’s a lovely way to greet people into the world of Indian artisans.

The festival is on from 10.30 a.m. to 9.30 p.m. till July 18 at VOC Park Gate Grounds, Dr. Nanjappa Road. For details, call 99946 40694.

Tags: A carnival of colours

Buerkel's 'Nach der Jagd' was one of three paintings already returned to Germany

Eleven oil paintings that were among a stash that US soldiers are thought to have taken during World War II are on their way home.

The link between the paintings and their origins was discovered by Beth McFadden, whose great uncle, US Army Sergeant Harry Gursky, had been stationed near the town.

“Without the integrity and good will of Beth Ann McFadden, the repatriation of these paintings to the Pirmasens Museum could not have taken place,” said a statement from New York southern district attorney Preet Bharara.

“Each work of art returned symbolizes an act of justice, bringing us one step closer to the goal of repatriating all of the surviving pieces taken from museums during World War II.”

Hidden under a school

The town of Pirmasens suffered heavy bombing during the war and 40 of its museum’s prized paintings were hidden under a local school building.

McFadden researched the history of the paintings and found that the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement had an open investigation searching for them, believing them to have been taken by occupying troops.

The paintings, worth a total of 156,800 euros ($200,000), are to be housed at their original home, a museum in the southwestern German town of Pirmasens.

Three of the paintings by the 19th century artist Heinrich Buerkel, who was born in the town, are valued at almost 40,000 euros each. The collection also includes a painting by the artist Alois Broch.

Tags: Stolen wartime paintings wing way back to German museum