Legal Fight Over Nazi-Looted Painting Ends After 26 Years

Eighty years after it was seized by the Nazis as an example of "degenerate art," the decades-long legal battle over a German modernist painting has reached a settlement, reports Catherine Hickley of the New York Times. The 26-year-long legal fight by the descendants of art historian Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers is reportedly Germany's longest ever relating to Nazi-looted art.

Lissitzky-Küppers' husband purchased the painting "Swamp Legend" from artist Paul Klee shortly after its creation in 1919. The small oil painting shows Klee using bold colors to depict an abstract, Cubist figure.

In 1926, following her husband's death from tuberculosis, Lissitzky-Küppers left Germany and loaned her art collection to a museum in Hanover. "Swamp Legend" remained there undisturbed until the Nazis, who viewed nearly all modern art as going against their values, seized it along with tens of thousands of other works.