German police have found 1,500 paintings in Munich considered masterpieces of modern art.
The paintings were confiscated by the Nazis in the 1930s. They were considered lost after the Allied bombing of Dresden in 1945.
Some of these paintings belong to major painters of the 1920s, including Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, and Henri Matisse, Franz Marc, Max Beckmann, and Max Liebermann, with an estimated total value of about US$1.3 billion, according to the Focus German magazine.
They were reportedly found in the house of an old man whose father bought them in the 1930s and 1940s from Jews fleeing Germany.
The Nazis confiscated contemporary works of art when they came to power in 1933.
The magazine mentioned that the German police suspected the old German man after he was arrested on his way back from Switzerland in possession of huge sums of money.
They later discovered the paintings when they inspected his house.
