Art for Exchange

German museums have kept their excellent modern collections in cellars since the Aggrandizer of the Reich defined modern art as "degenerate." Last week they attempted to sell some choice examples of degeneracy on the international market. Up at auction in the big ballroom of the Hotel National in Lucerne, Switzerland, after having been displayed appetizingly for six weeks there and in Zurich, were 125 works by van Gogh, Gauguin, Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Modigliani, Lehmbruck, Barlach, Chagall, Hofer, Klee, Grosz and others.

This was not all or even mostly a brave gesture of contempt for the schools of art represented. It was one more of Germany's ingenious efforts to get foreign exchange. Total value placed on the collection was about a quarter-million dollars. But after the hammer had fallen all one stifling hot day amid a quiet, correct and much photographed international crowd, Nazi sellers were greatly disappointed. Six pictures remained unsold and returns on the others totaled about $135.000.

Chief buyers were not individual big names but a small, mysterious cartel of French and Dutch art dealers who were suspected of acting for interests in the U. S. Highest price paid (by Editor Alfred M. Frankfurter of the U. S. Art News) was $39,400 for the famous van Gogh Self Portrait which used to hang in the State Gallery at Munich. Manhattan Dealer Pierre Matisse paid $945 for his famed father's Three Women, from the Folk Museum at Essen. Principal acquisitions of the Franco-Dutch cartel were Picasso's Soler Family (1903), from Koln, Two Harlequins (1905), from Wuppertal-Elberfeld.

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