In late September the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office ordered 7 Schiele paintings to be seized from both private and public (including the Carnegie and Oberlin Museums of Art) collections and repatriated to the heirs of Fritz Grünbaum, an Austrian-Jewish cabaret artist who was killed during the Holocaust. Not even 10 days later, six of the paintings hit the auction floor with a combined (expected) sale of up to $8.45 million.
Cover Image: Alvin L. Bragg (right), the Manhattan District Attorney, and the heirs of Fritz Grünbaum (left), an Austrian-Jewish cabaret artist who was killed during the Holocaust, at a ceremony honoring the restitution of 7 Egon Schiele artworks. (Image Courtesy of ArtNet News)
If there’s any artist whose works have been the prime subject of arduous legal disputes and cryptic statements by university art museums, it’s got to be Egon Schiele. The Austrian Expressionist painter, known by many as Klimt’s protege, wass famous for his raw, emotional paintings that depict his intimate and erotic view of the human figure. Take for example Portrait of Wally, which was embroiled in an ardent legal dispute between MoMA and the Leopold Foundation and the heirs of Jewish art dealer Lea Bondi Jaray for 12 years! While I won’t bore you with all the details of the litigation and arbitration that followed—a rarity in Holocaust restitution cases—the two parties ultimately settled and the Leopold Foundation paid $19 million to the heirs while the painting “remained in Austria.” If you thought 12 years was a long time for a restitution case to be resolved, well, I have news for you. The heirs of Fritz Grünbaum, a Viennese cabaret artist who was murdered in Dachau by the Nazis in 1941, have been fighting for more than 25 years (including an international incident in 1998) to get back all their artworks.
Portrait of Wally, one of Schiele’s most famous works. (Image Courtesy of WikimediaCommons)
It all started in late September when the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office ordered seven Schiele paintings, belonging to the Grünbaum heirs, to be seized from various museums across the United States. According to Graham Bowley from the New York Times, all seven of these works were spread across three museums—MoMA, the Morgan Library and Museum, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art—and two private collections—those of Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky. “Prostitute” (1912) and “Girl Putting on Shoe” (1910) were both surrendered by MoMA, “Portrait of the Artist’s Wife, Edith” (1915) by the Santa Barbara Museum, and “Self-Portrait” (1910) by the Morgan Library and Museum. Mr. Lauder, who ironically is a champion of Nazi-restitutions, returned “I Love Antithesis” (1912) and Mr. Sabarsky gave back “Portrait of a Boy (Herbert Reiner)” (1910) and “Seated Woman” (1911).
Egon Schiele, Prostitute (Dine), watercolor and pencil on paper, 1912. (Image Courtesy of MoMA)
On September 20th, 2023, the Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, held a ceremony in which he returned the seven paintings to the Grünbaum heirs, celebrating the “historic and groundbreaking” day in which “these beautiful works” were returned to “their rightful home.” The head of the Antiquities Trafficking Unit at the Manhattan DA’s Office, Matthew Bogdanos, also said during the ceremony that “today is proof that in this office, justice has no expiration date.” At the end of the ceremony, the Grünbaum heirs were presented with all 7 of Mr. Grünbaum’s paintings as Mr. Bogdanos gave a few words about the paintings’ compositions and materials.
The Grünbaum heirs, as Benjamin Sutton from The Art Newspaper writes, believe that in 1938, when he had been arrested and sent to Dachau, Mr. Grünbaum was forced to sign a “a power-of-attorney document, which paved the way for the Nazis to seize and disperse his art collection.” Before he arrived at Dachau, Mr. Grünbaum was a “well-known cabaret performer, librettist, writer, film actor, and director in interwar Vienna, known for his clever and ironic humor” and “outspoken in his criticisms of German persecution during the 1930s,” according to Sutton. Following in the footsteps of his art-collector father, Mr. Grünbaum had about 81 paintings in his vast art collection—dozens of which have ended up in the U.S., particularly New York City, after the Nazis sold and dispersed them.
Egon Schiele, Portrait of the Artist’s Wife, Edith, pencil on paper, 1915. (Image Courtesy of The New York Times)
In early October, it was revealed that 6 of the 7 paintings were to be placed for auction at Christies’ on two separate auction days. Three of the paintings will be auctioned on November 9th, during the house’s 20th Century Evening Sale, while the other three will be auctioned two days later, during the house’s Impressionist & Modern Works on Paper Sale. While “none of the six pieces currently carries a guarantee,” as Taylor Dafoe from ArtNet News writes, they seem to be valued collectively at $9.5 million. In her statement to ArtNet News, Vanessa Fusco, Christie’s Head of Impressionist & Modern Art, said “what is remarkable about this group of six works is the way it really shows the artistic evolution that Schiele underwent.”
Interestingly enough, during WWII, Schiele’s works were considered to be “degenerate art,” a classification of art by the Nazi regime that included all modern art and singled out the Expressionists. According to the Tate Museum, some of the works, including Schiele’s, were displayed in an exhibition entitled Entartete Kunst in Munich. Earlier this year, the Folkwang Museum in Essen bought back one of Schiele’s watercolors that had been deemed “degenerate art” and confiscated by the Nazis.
Egon Schiele, Self-Portrait, black chalk and watercolor on brown paper, 1910. (Image Courtesy of The New York Times)
Discarding the hateful label the Nazis placed on these masterpieces, we notice that these works have a certain magic to them. As Fusco says, they represent the “moment when he stepped out from under [Klimt’s] shadow…and… focus[es] on just the human condition. That’s a rather radical shift that comes around this time.” These paintings also highlight the events of the artist’s personal life, including his own Self-Portrait, I Love Antithesis, which was painted during a two-week “stint” in Austrian prison, and the drawing of his wife, which scholars have called the most intimate of the bunch.
Egon Schiele, Portrait of a Boy (Herbert Reiner), gouache, watercolor and pencil on paper, 1910. (Image Courtesy of The New York Times)
While the auction is still a few weeks away, Dafoe notes that the heirs and the art house have decided that “fifty percent of proceeds from the sales will go…toward a scholarship program for young musicians organized by the newly-created Grünbaum Fischer Foundation. The remaining profits will head to another Grünbaum descendent, Milos Vavra.” When asked if they would “take its typical consignment fees for the six artworks,” Christie’s declined to comment.
In mid-September, three of Schiele’s works were seized from three art institutions around the United States: Russian War Prisoner (1916) was taken the Art Institute of Chicago, Portrait of a Man (1917) from the Carnegie Art Museum, and Girl with Black Hair (1911) from the Allen Memorial Art Museum, all of which “face lawsuits from the heirs in federal court.” Spokespersons from each museum have reached out to The Art Newspaper expressing their confidence about their legal acquisition and possession of the work and their commitment to work with the courts. As such, the auction marks a bittersweet victory in the greater context of the Grünbaum restitutions case. Of the seven returned works, Timothy Reif, one of the Grünbaum heirs, said in a statement to The New York Times that he “love[s] these works because recovering them allows me to honor the memory of this man.” Stay tuned for more updates!
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