Piotr Gliński presented these reclaimed treasures at the Polish Consulate General in New York on Sunday, news outlets reported.
Before the outbreak of World War II, these artworks had been part of the private collection of Count Edward Raczyński in Warsaw. In 1939, they were among many art pieces deposited at the National Museum in Warsaw to protect them from plunder.
However, despite these efforts, the watercolors were lost during the war.
In 2008, they resurfaced at an auction, where they were purchased by Marek Kabat, a Polish chemist and art collector residing in the United States.
In a gracious act, Kabat agreed to return these cultural treasures to Poland, according to officials.
The reclaimed artworks will now find a new home at Warsaw's National Museum.
Zygmunt Vogel, one of the earliest Polish artists fascinated with depicting Polish landmarks, left behind a legacy of over 400 works in Poland.
Another artwork in the restitution process is a drawing by Melchior Steidl, which was stolen from a private collection in Warsaw in 2005.
It later appeared in an auction and was acquired by the National Gallery of Art in Washington. Thanks to the collaborative efforts of the Polish culture ministry and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the drawing is now on its way back to its rightful owner.
The endeavor is part of a broader effort to restore artworks lost during the war, and the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage says it is making significant progress.
They are actively pursuing restitution cases, with 27 applications filed to date, according to Gliński. He emphasized the importance of these efforts, given the immense scale of wartime losses, with around half a million movable artworks still unaccounted for.
'Brutal destruction and systematic looting'
"The brutal destruction and systematic looting by both German and later Russian forces were devastating," said Gliński, the Polish minister for culture and national heritage. He highlighted that despite the lack of cooperation from Moscow, his ministry continues to file restitution requests, anticipating a potential change in the Russian regime.
The Polish culture ministry is currently handling around 150 restitution processes involving artworks in 15 countries worldwide, according to officials.
The ministry's databases catalog 68,000 artworks lost during World War II and an additional 12,000 artworks stolen and illegally removed from Poland, including during the communist era, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
(rt/gs)
Source: PAP