In 1911, the Elberfeld Museum Association acquired the painting “Acrobat and Young Harlequin” (1905) by Pablo Picasso through the intervention of the collector August von der Heydt in Paris. It was donated to the Elberfeld Municipal Museum. This made it the first work by Picasso in a museum collection worldwide. “Acrobat and Young Harlequin” would have made a spectacular exhibit for the major autumn exhibition of the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal, the successor institution to the Elberfeld House – had it not been confiscated and sold by the Nazis in 1937 as “degenerate art”. Today it is privately owned and was not available for “Picasso/Beckmann”.
Picasso/Beckmann in the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal: Parallel Monologues – Culture
