Painted in coloured inks and gouache by Rabindranath Tagore, India's most famous poet, they found a place in a leading museum in Berlin. Tagore, the first non-European to win the Nobel literature prize, had gifted the paintings to Germany in 1930.
Seven years later, the paintings were purged by the Nazi regime which had begun to classify some "inappropriate" art works as degenerate.
Hitler, a failed artist himself, believed post-impressionist modern art to be "evidence of a deranged mind" and ordered more than 16,000 artworks, including ones by Van Gogh and Man Ray, to be removed from German museums.
The Nazis considered such art "degenerate" and even staged an exhibition to ridicule them.
There appears to be scant record of how and why Tagore's paintings were targeted in a notorious campaign by Hitler. Art historians speculate that it was easy for the Nazis to demonise his art because they were modernist by nature - Hitler once said that "anyone who sees and paints the sky green and fields blue ought to be sterilised".
Tagore visited Germany thrice - in 1921, 1926 and 1930. Two dozen of his books were already available in German translation. "Wherever he spoke, the halls were packed. The newspapers reported scuffles and regular fights by people who were refused entry," says Martin Kampchen, a German author who has translated Tagore's works. The local media hailed the Indian poet as the 'wise man from the East'; and a 'prophet, a mystic and a messiah'.
In 1930, a solo show carrying some 300 of Tagore's artworks travelled to Europe. More than 100 of his paintings were shown in Paris, and at least half of them at the National Gallery of Art in Berlin before the exhibition proceeded to London.