Stolen by Nazis: Returned painting on display at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library

Among colorful paintings of women and men dressed in traditional Moravian folk dress, one painting’s provenance tells the story of reclamation.

Depicting a young woman sitting in the grass dressed in a carefully pleated white blouse, intricately embroidered pink apron, and embellished red scarf atop her head, the circa 1917 work is untitled, as most of Joža Uprka’s paintings are.

But the painting belonged to Franz (Frantisek) Gottlieb Schnabel, the owner of a cotton spinning and weaving business with textile mills in the former Czechoslovakia.

Sometime around 1942, three years into Nazi Germany’s occupation of Czechoslovakia, the Gestapo ordered the confiscation of all of Schnabel’s business and personal assets, including the untitled painting. In 1947, after World War II ended, Schnabel filed an Application for the Restitution of Czechoslovak Property, which included numerous paintings. It wasn’t until 2010, with the help of the New York State Department of Financial Services’ Holocaust Claims Processing Office, that the seized Uprka painting was returned to the Schnabel family.

See the painting and more than 120 works by Uprka in the exhibit, “The Soul of Moravia: Joža Uprka Reprised,” through March 29 at the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library, 1400 Inspiration Pl. SW, Cedar Rapids. NCSML is open seven days a week, Monday through Saturday 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sunday noon to 4 p.m.

Curator-guided tours of the exhibit are slated for March 7 at 10 a.m. and March 18 at 2 p.m. See NCSML.org for details and registration.