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82 FA L L 2 014 U N TAC K E D THE HORSE IN ART and invite a melding with their animal- istic essence. Before it disappeared, Tower (and the Landscape watercolor as well) was displayed in Hitler's "Degenerate Art" exhibition of 1937 in Munich, designed to scare and incite the public against modernist work. An amateur artist himself, Hitler considered the expressionist, neo-real- ist and Dadaist styles to be perverse, and he meant to rid the world of their influence. at didn't mean, however, that he ordered the immedi- ate destruction of its examples. A law passed in 1938 allowed the Nazis to confiscate any art deemed degen- erate, and as such the administration was able to sell this art "legally" on the open market, with the funds going to the German war effort. But first, Hitler mounted the Degenerate Art exhibition, with works displayed in disturbing arrangements and accompa- nied by derisive descriptions. When the public saw Marc's art in the Degener- ate Art shows, they protested enough that his work was moved out of that category officially. Neverthe- less, Landscape with Horses mysteriously ended up in Gurlitt's collection, and Tower of Blue Horses was last seen in 1945 in the possession of Hermann Goering. Goering was a Nazi military leader, commander of the Luftwaffe, president of the Reichstag, prime minister of Prussia and, at one time, Hitler's desig- nated successor. An avid art collector, Goering con- trolled the Netherlands occupation and gobbled up art at confiscation rates. He loved the work of Rem- brandt, Vermeer and other Dutch masters, and he absorbed collections put together by Dutch merchants over the centuries. Goering scoured for art throughout Europe, as did Hitler, who wanted to create a massive art exhibi- tion at his planned Führermuseum in Linz, Austria. In France, for example, 36,000 paintings were stolen from both institutions and individuals. "e Monuments Men recovered and returned the majority of those," explained Lucian Simmons, Sothe- by's head of restitution. (e 2014 film "e Monu- CHRISTOF STACHE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES PHOTO Above: A projection of painter Franz Marc's Landscape with Horses was showcased during a November 2013 news conference in Augsburg, Germany, following the discov- ery of Gurlitt's cache. The piece is a more muted rendition of Marc's famous Big Blue Horses (right).