1,500 artworks, including masterpieces by Picasso, Matisse and Chagall, stolen by the Nazis and missing for more than 70 years, have been found in an apartment in Munich, German media reported.
The discovery of the paintings, estimated to be worth more than $1 billion, was made in 2011 in Munich in the framework of an investigation by Bavarian authorities into a suspected tax evasion but its existence has only just come to light in an article in German news magazine Focus.
The apartment was owned by Cornelius Gurlitt, the reclusive elderly son of a war-time art dealer.
His father, Hildebrand Gurlitt, a specialist collector of the modern art of the early 20th century was recruited by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels to sell the "degenerate art" abroad to try to earn cash for the state. Gurlitt bought some for himself and also independently bought art from desperate Jewish dealers forced to sell.
The collection is said toalso include works by Paul Klee, Oskar Kokoschka, Franz Marc, Max Beckmann, Emil Nolde and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, many of which had been believed destroyed during WWII.
The paintings were kept in storage in a secure warehouse in the city ever since.
German authorities have refused to confirm or deny any details relating to the discovery.
"The German government is supporting the state prosecution in Augsburg by supplying advice from experts in the field of so-called degenerate art and the entire issue of Nazi-looted art," the government spokesman Steffen Seibert said. "But we cannot comment any of the issues of the ongoing investigation."
Thousands of pieces of art labeled "degenerate" by the Nazis were looted from private collections and confiscated from galleries during the 1930s and 1940s. Other works were stolen from Jewish families or sold for a fraction of their true value as the owners tried to flee the country.
"This case shows the extent of organised art robbery which occurred in museums and private collections," said Ruediger Mahlo, representative of theConference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany. ''Private collections were almost all in Jewish possession."
"We demand that the paintings be handed back to their original owners," he said.
He criticized the lack of transparency in dealing with the case and said it was typical of the attitude towards looted art, which for some Jewish families constitutes the last personal effects of relatives murdered during the Holocaust.