Van Diemen-Lilienfeld Gallerie

Description

In 1918, an art gallery specializing initially in Dutch painting was founded in Berlin, Germany. Eduard Plietzsch (1919–1935) and Kurt Benedict (1923–1933) were the firm’s first directors, and shortly thereafter they opened additional branches in The Hague, Amsterdam, and New York. In 1922, they organized an exhibition dedicated to Russian avant-garde art, which was a great success. A few years later, the business passed into the hands of Jacob and Rosa Oppenheimer, Jewish art dealers who were forced in 1933 to cede control of it to the Nazi Bolko von Richthofen. The Oppenheimers died in the 1940s: Jacob while fleeing to Nice and Rosa in a concentration camp. The Berlin branch was liquidated in 1935 by order of the Nazis, while the New York branch merged with the Lilienfeld Gallery, becoming the van Diemen-Lilienfeld Gallery in 1960.