Hungarian avant-garde painting last seen in 1928 turns up in "Stuart Little" movie

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Alessandra Kelley

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http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-...ong-lost-hungarian-painting-come-home/5924194

Hungarian art historian Gergely Barki was watching "Stuart Little" with his daughter when behind Hugh Laurie and Geena Davis he spotted a stylish cubist painting of a sleeping woman by a black vase.

He immediately recognized it as a lost work by Robert Bereny, a Hungarian artist.

Bereny, the leader of a pre-World War I avant-garde movement called the "Group of Eights," fled to Berlin in 1920 after designing recruitment posters for Hungary's short-lived communist revolution in 1919.

In the German capital, he had a romance with actress Marlene Dietrich, and, according to Mr Barki, a rumoured fling with Anastasia, the mysterious daughter of Russia's last tsar Nicholas II.

The painting had been last seen in a black and white exhibition catalogue from 1928. The painting's unknown buyer is believed to have fled Hungary for the United States some time around the Second World War.

A Sony Pictures assistant set designer spotted the painting for sale cheap in a Pasadena antiques shop and bought it for the film, then bought it afterwards from Sony because she liked it so much.

She then sold it to a private collector who is now offering the painting for sale at an auction in Hungary.
 

mirandashell

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Oh that's great news. Hopefully it will end up in a museum where lots of people can see it.

I love it when a lost work is found.
 

Maryn

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How amazing this is. The happy ending's just gravy.

Maryn, astonished at the small world she lives in
 
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