How did three valuable paintings permanently loaned to Berlin’s state museums end up for sale at Gagosian in New York? When property developer and celebrated art collector Erich Marx died at the age of 99 in 2020, he bequeathed two paintings by Andy Warhol and a third by Cy Twombly to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (SPK), which oversees Berlin’s state museums.

These three prized paintings, Warhol’s Ten-Foot Flowers (1967) and Do It Yourself (Seascape) (1962), as well a quintessentially Twombly canvas Empire of Flora (1961), were on permanent display at the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. Much of the renowned Marx Collection of more than 200 pieces of postwar art had already been permanently loaned to the SPK since the 1990s. According to a report in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung authored by German art historian Hubertus Butin, “in 2014, the art collector’s loan agreement with the foundation stated that no works should be removed [from the museum] or sold.”

The foundation was forced to defend itself, however, when it transpired that care of the three works by Twombly and Warhol had been transferred to Marx’s heirs, the lenders, in spring 2022, as confirmed to FAZ last year by the SPK’s president Hermann Parzinger. They were eventually offered for sale by Gagosian in New York, according to Butin. Gagosian has declined to comment.

Claudia Roth, Germany’s culture minister, and Hermann Parzinger, president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. Photo: Hannes P Albert/picture alliance via Getty Images.

It appears this transfer of care may have been done in exchange for a “generous gift” of eight works by Joseph Beuys that were donated to the Nationalgalerie in Berlin by the Marx Collection, according to an announcement from late 2022. A spokesperson for Germany’s culture minister Claudia Roth told FAZ: “The prerequisite for [the Beuys gift], however, was that the family as a lender had taken three works.” According to Butin, the Prazinger “kept this secret for a year and a half.”

The president claimed the process of transferring care of the three paintings to Marx’s heirs was entirely above board. “This was done at the request of the lenders and on the basis of the loan agreement, with the consent of the SPK and, of course, in compliance with the Cultural Property Protection Act and with the appropriate official approval,” Parzinger told FAZ.

Though the London Times reported that Roth is now launching an investigation into the incident, a spokesperson for the SPK said no such investigation is taking place and that, in fact, Germany’s ministry of culture and the media was involved in the procedure of transferring the works to Marx’s heirs. A spokesperson of the Minister of State for Culture and the Media confirmed that there is no investigation.

“There was no ‘exchange’ of three works for a gift,” the spokesperson for the SPK said. “The collection of the late Erich Marx will remain in the Nationalgalerie on the basis of a loan agreement concluded with his family, who repeatedly stated that their intention is that the collection shall remain in Berlin.”

They added that, while Marx wanted his collection to remain in Berlin, “did not donate it but concluded a loan agreement. The family renewed this loan agreement and in addition gave the Beuys donation.”

“The Marx family’s very extensive loan of over 200 works is a voluntary patronage commitment,” said a spokesperson of the Minister of State for Culture and the Media.

According to Butin, the collective worth of the Beuys is less than a sixth of the whopping €170 million ($185 million) valuation he has given to the three Warhols and Twombly. By 2023, Warhol’s Do It Yourself (Seascape) had already reportedly been sold to a private collector in the U.S.

Butin also claimed that, according to a “legal review” of Marx’s loan agreement with the SPK, Parzinger had the right to veto the removal of the three valuable works from its collection, in line with Marx’s wishes. Instead, said Butin, “in 2022, he drew up a new loan agreement for the Marx family and agreed to the removal and sale of the pictures.”

He also argued that Parzinger had attempted to misrepresent the nature of the exchange of paintings as a donation, when “according to the Civil Code, a gift only exists if the donation is made without an obligation to provide something in return.” He said the SPK president’s unwillingness to explain the current contractural status of the works has “led to questions even at the highest levels of the Berlin art world about what interests Parzinger actually represented.”