Several prominent museums and art collectors have returned artwork by Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele to the family of a Jewish cabaret performer who owned them before he was killed by the Nazis.
The seven pieces of artwork were returned to the heirs of Fritz Grünbaum, an Austrian cabaret performer who was murdered in the Dachau concentration camp in Germany in 1941, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said Wednesday. The Nazis stole hundreds of pieces of art owned by Grünbaum, including more than 80 works by Schiele, the office said.
The Museum of Modern Art, the Ronald S. Lauder Collection, the Morgan Library & Museum, the Vally Sabarsky Trust, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art agreed to return the works after prosecutors presented evidence the art was stolen by Nazis, the district attorney’s office said.
The artworks are valued between $780,000 and $2.75 million, according to the Manhattan district attorney’s office. The Museum of Modern Art returned “Standing Woman” and “Girl Putting on Shoe.” The Morgan Library & Museum surrendered “Self Portrait.”
The Morgan Library & Museum declined to comment, and the Museum of Modern Art didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The Ronald S. Lauder Collection returned “I Love Antithesis,” a watercolor and pencil drawing on paper. Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress and an heir to the
Estée Lauder
cosmetics company, said in a statement he acquired the piece from an art dealer decades after it was stolen.
“I am pleased and honored to be able to help Fritz Grünbaum’s heirs continue their laudable efforts to recover his legacy,” Lauder said.
The Santa Barbara Museum of Art gave back “Portrait of the Artist’s Wife, Edith,” a pencil drawing. Wright Ludington, one of the museum’s founders, donated the piece in 1957.
The Vally Sabarsky Trust returned “Portrait of a Boy,” and “Seated Woman.” An attorney who has represented the estate of New York-based art dealer Serge Sabarsky declined to comment.
Timothy Reif, a relative of Fritz Grünbaum, said the district attorney’s office has “succeeded in solving crimes perpetrated over 80 years ago.”
The Nazis captured Grünbaum in 1938 and forced him to sign a power of attorney document that gave control of his affairs to his wife, Elisabeth Grünbaum, while he was imprisoned, prosecutors said. She later handed over his entire collection to the Nazis.
The Nazis designated Schiele as a degenerate painter in part because he often enlisted sex workers to pose for him and painted scenes of nude lovers in intimate contortions that are now hailed as a peak of Austrian expressionism. He also painted a number of self-portraits that have sold for as much as $12.3 million.
Grünbaum’s Schiele collection later appeared at a Swiss auction house in the 1950s, the district attorney’s office said. The owner of the auction house—Eberhard Kornfeld, who died in April—received hundreds of Nazi-looted artworks stolen from Holocaust victims.
Kornfeld sold most of Grünbaum’s Schiele works to Otto Kallir, an Austrian-American owner of an art gallery in New York City, prosecutors said. Kallir died in 1978.
A New York civil court ruled in 2018 that Grünbaum never legally relinquished the rights to his art collection, making his heirs the rightful owners of the works. The ruling forced an art dealer to turn over two works by Schiele over to Grünbaum’s heirs.
“I hope this moment can serve as a reminder that despite the horrific death and destruction caused by the Nazis, it is never too late to recover some of what we lost, honor the victims, and reflect on how their families are still impacted to this day,” said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
