The next person of importance in this series is Max Stern (1904 – 1987). Although not an artist, Stern occupies the same space as several previous features that focused upon Alan Jarvis and Jack Pollock.
Stern was extremely important as an art collector, dealer and philanthropist and his support and championing of many Canadian artists with the Dominion Gallery / Galerie Dominion in Montreal helped define Canadian art in the post WW II era.
Posthumously, Stern’s legacy continues with Max Stern Art Restitution Project and their efforts to compensate and recognize his persecution at the hands of the nazi regime and to employ art and culture as a means to acknowledge history and truth.
He was born in Mönchengladbach (which was known as München-Gladbach at the time), Germany, in 1904. Stern earned a doctorate from the University of Bonn in 1928, after studies in Cologne, Berlin, Vienna and Paris. His father was a prominent art collector and gallerist in Düsseldorf and when his father passed in 1934, Stern took over his father’s gallery.
The previous year – 1933 – the Nazis came to power in Germany and began their persecution of many groups, including those of Jewish heritage like Stern. As his rights were consistently restricted and removed, Stern began to plan for leaving Germany.
Hitler’s government – through The Reich Chamber of Fine Arts – stripped Stern of professional accreditation and he was given a month to liquidate all of Galerie Stern’s holding. Galerie Sterne was then ‘aryanized’ : essentially, Stern was robbed of all gallery assets that were then ‘transferred to non-Jewish ownership in 1937.’
Many important artworks (both contemporary and historical) were sold and some remain lost, even to this day.
In December of 1937, Stern fled (with few possessions) with the intent of joining his sister in London (they had opened a gallery there several years before, as part of an escape plan from Germany). However, he was detained as an ‘enemy alien’ in a British refuge camp on the Isle of Man in the U.K. for two years before being allowed to emigrate to Canada. Again, he was forced to leave many of his belongings in Britain, and spent a further two years in internment camps in both New Brunswick and Quebec.
Because of Stern’s academic background and art dealing experience, he was named director of the Dominion Gallery of Fine Art. In January 1947, Stern and his wife Iris Westerberg (a Swede that Stern had met at the Canadian Refugee organization) took over the gallery completely. Dominion Gallery or Galerie Dominion in Montreal promoted many young Canadian artists and their contribution on this front helped not only raise the tenor of Canadian art but many institutions across the country now own works whose provenance can be traced directly back to Dominion Gallery platforming these artists.
In the mid 1940s, Dominion Gallery was instrumental in promoting many works by the Group of Seven as well as Emily Carr, for example.
From here : Stern’s “first major coup came in 1944, when he visited Emily Carr, then seventy-two, at her home in Victoria. She showed him a room packed with 300 paintings. Struck speechless by her talent, asked if he could mount an exhibition. Laughing, she replied, “You will not sell a single painting.” The recipient of critical praise, Carr had yet to enjoy commercial success. “If you let me choose the paintings,” Stern replied, “I think I can make it a perfect success.””
Beginning in the 1950s, Stern was very generous in terms of donations of artworks to Canadian institutions, especially in Montreal.
Below are a selection of works donated to major galleries by the Sterns, with several from important Canadian artists like Emily Carr, previously featured Artist You Need To Know Prudence Heward, J.E.H. MacDonald, Charles Gagnon and Paul-Émile Borduas.
One of the very concrete ways in which Stern supported Canadian visual artists was with his ‘contract system’ : this would mean that an artist would be funded with monthly payments in exchange for an agreed number of works being passed on to Stern and Dominion Gallery for exhibition and sales. This is a system that is now employed by many gallerists around the world, from France to England to the United States.
In 1950, Dominion Gallery relocated and expanded to a three-story building in a different area of Montreal with 14 separate exhibition spaces. In 1985, Stern was recognized with an honourary doctorate from Concordia University.
In 1987, Stern passed away in Paris. Dominion Gallery would only close its doors in 2000, still acting as a fine focal point for Canadian artists for more than a decade after Stern’s death.
The Max Stern Art Restitution Project began in 2005. Below are a number of artworks that have been recovered through this endeavour.
The project was a collaboration between the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, McGill University, Concordia University and the Holocaust Claims Processing Office in New York. It is focused upon locating and recovering the many works from the original Stern collection that were stolen or have been ‘lost’ since the 1930s, with an eye to making amends for the crimes of the German Nazi government.
The site for the Max Stern Art Restitution Project also offers a more in depth history of Stern’s life and his impressive rise to being an indispensable patron of the post WW II Canadian art scene after his sufferings in Europe.
Stern’s legacy goes beyond his own personal history.
From The Walrus : Clarence Epstein, a Montreal-born, British-trained art expert with extensive experience in art estate management, who has overseen Stern’s cultural property since 1999 “believes these victories [in repatriating works ethically] are just the beginning. “Numerous restitution cases, relating to Aboriginal war losses and other historical cases, will be exposed to the same arguments that we have brought forth,” he says. Questions of cultural ownership and art attribution are about to undergo intense rethinking. The very notion of what constitutes a museum will come under scrutiny as institutions like the Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf overhaul the process by which cultural objects are described and catalogued. Each Stern estate restitution will heighten public intolerance of the art world’s obfuscation of provenance. “We hope,” says Epstein, “that one day it will be ethically untenable to visit a museum with stolen art on its walls.”
During his lifetime, Max Stern was legally limited in retrieving what was taken from him, but the events he set in motion when he died have fired the consciences of curators, policy-makers, judges, and governments around the world. His story, no longer a secret, is bringing us closer to realizing Wilhelm von Schadow’s ideal: the truth found through art.”
A film about The Max Stern Restitution Project titled The Spoils premiered in 2024. More about that can be seen here and a fine article that explores the vagaries of contested narratives in history – especially when dealing with the concepts of nations and a reckoning of history – can be seen here.
Much more about Max Stern’s life, legacy and importance to Canadian art can be seen here. An excellent article about Stern and The Max Stern Restitution Project can be enjoyed here.