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Moïse Lévy de Benzion

Header: Moïse Lévy de Benzion
Also known as: Moïse Lévy de Benzion; primary name: Lévy de Benzion, Moïse
Details: individual; collector; Egyptian; Male
Life dates: 1873-1943
Biography: Collector and department store owner. Built an important collection of art and antiquities. The collection was plundered by the Nazis in France during the Second World War and nearly 1000 items seized. Lévy de Benzion was a Sephardi Jew born in Alexandria, Egypt and inherited a family business started in 1857 which he expanded to include the Grands Magasins Benzion department store and other buildings in Cairo. As a collector, Lévy de Benzion's acquisitions included Chinese and oriental art, textiles, carpets, books, and an important collection of Egyptian antiquities. His Egyptian items included fragments from the lost tomb of Nebamun, and one of the earliest known glass portraits, believed to depict AmenhotepI. Arrested by the Nazis in France and died in September 1943. Collection sold at auction at Villa Benzion, 6 Rue El Amir Omar, Zamalek, Cairo, in March 1947 in a sale of over 900 lots. Villa Benzion was in a part of Zamalek where several other department-store owners lived, but like many other large private houses in the area, it no longer exists. NB E-mail from Marino Vismara (3.10.2019) states that the 11 etchings by Fattori (2019,7014.1 to 11) were looted by the Nazis from Moise Levy de Benzion in 1940 near Paris and then restituted after the war to his daughter, from his first marriage, Sarah. She married a man called Streitz and then they were sold by her son Marc Streitz through auction to a dealer from which I bought them, then through another auction and then directly from him. One etching among the twelve looted by the nazists is still missing. Moise Levy de Benzion's nephew Marc Streitz is the the source of the 11 Fattori etchings now in the BM (see e-mail exchange in Fattori dossier).