Jacek Malczewski canvas looted in WWII returns to Warsaw museum

A Jacek Malczewski painting that disappeared from the National Museum in Warsaw after the city’s 1944 uprising against the Germans, has returned to where it belongs, officials have announced.

Jacek Malczewski's "The Piano Lesson."

Photo: PAP/Andrzej Lange

Entitled The Piano Lesson, the work depicts Malczewski’s two younger sisters Bronisława and Helena.

Painted in 1877, it is one of around 70 works by Malczewski that went missing during World War II. It has now been recovered by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.

The list of Poland’s wartime art losses comprises about 63,000 items. Since 2016 some 500 works have been recovered. Those still missing include Cranach's Madonna, Raphael's Portrait of a Young Man and Albrecht Dürer's A Lying Lioness, a drawing on paper.

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