If you’ve ever walked up Fifth Avenue to 86th Street in New York City and stepped into the imposing Beaux-Arts building on the corner that houses the Neue Galerie, the dazzling collection of twentieth-century German and Austrian art owned by cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder, then chances are you’re familiar with the work of artist Egon Schiele (1890-1918).
Schiele was an Austrian Expressionist who had a brief but exceptionally prolific career working in Vienna in the early 20th century. His artwork is characterized by intense, twisty, borderline-pornographic portraits of figures drawn with fluid lines, in awkward poses, with emotionally charged gazes. Using neutrals juxtaposed with bright primary colors, Schiele’s work often leaves the viewer with a disturbing sense of melancholy.
Schiele died in 1918 from Spanish influenza at the age of 28, leaving behind thousands of works of art produced in a very short period. During his lifetime, Schiele was recognized as a brilliant but controversial artist.
Since his death, his artwork has continued to increase in both recognition of his artistic brilliance and monetary value. In 2011, Sotheby’s auction house sold a Schiele painting (“House with Colorful Laundry, Suburb II” from 1914) for $40 million.
Between the years of 1933 and 1945, more than 600,000 works of art owned by Jewish residents of German-occupied Europe were stolen by the Nazis, including 81 works by Egon Schiele. These 81 pieces were owned by Fritz Grünbaum, an Austrian-Jewish cabaret performer. Grünbaum and his wife, Elisabeth, were avid art collectors, owning hundreds of paintings. When Fritz was sent to the Dachau concentration camp in 1938, Elisabeth was forced to hand over the couple’s art collection to the Nazis.
The restitution of Grünbaum’s work began in 1999 when Leon Fisher and Milos Vavra were contacted by researchers who had discovered that they were legal heirs of the Grünbaums and therefore the rightful owners of the 81 Schiele works seized by the Nazis. This generated a multitude of lawsuits, beginning with the lengthy 2005 fight to return “Seated Woman With a Bent Left Leg (Torso)” (1917). In 2012, the court determined that the piece was rightfully acquired by the current owner, a collector who purchased the work in the 1960s.
Following this loss in 2012, the heirs went to court in 2015 when “Woman Hiding Her Face” (1912) and “Woman in a Black Pinafore” (1911) were in the process of being sold in New York. The Grünbaum heirs won this case, which gained them recognition and standing in their 2022 case against The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and The Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA). The heirs went to court against these museums over “Portrait of the Artist’s Wife” (1915) owned by SBMA and “Prostitute” (1912) acquired by MoMA; both pieces were returned to the owners.
More recently, in 2023, the Grünbaum heirs, through their attorney, Raymond J. Dowd, sought the assistance of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office in recovering seven Schieles from the Grünbaum collection that were in New York. The seven Schieles were all voluntarily surrendered when evidence was presented that established that the following pieces were stolen from the Grünbaums: “I Love Antithesis” (1912), from the Ronald Lauder Collection; “Girl Putting on Shoe” (1910) from MoMA; “Self Portrait” (1910), from The Morgan Library; “Portrait of a Boy” (1910), from the Vally Sabarsky Trust, and “Seated Woman” (1910), from the Vally Sabarsky Trust.
The seven Schieles were returned to the Grünbaum heirs by Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan District Attorney, on Sept 20, 2023. As of November 2023, only 13 of the 81 Schieles have been returned to the Grünbaum heirs, and efforts will continue to recover as many works as possible.
People create connections to objects that they care about. These objects speak to us, and speak about us — they represent who we are. When an art collector such as Fritz Grünbaum is drawn to a certain artist, such as Egon Schiele, he establishes a relationship, and those artworks and that collection become part of his identity.
Ancestors of art collectors, like Leon Fisher and Milos Vavra, stay linked to their ancestors by caring for paintings and retaining familial pieces. The 81 Schieles that were stolen by Nazis are eternally linked to Fritz Grünbaum, and they are how his family can connect to him and continue his legacy. They are doing so now by auctioning off six of the seven returned Schieles at Christie’s, and using the proceeds from the sale to establish a philanthropic foundation that will provide scholarships to young musicians, thus ensuring that Fritz Grünbaum will be honored and remembered.
Restituting Nazi-looted art is a challenging and complex endeavor. The first step is to locate the stolen artwork. In some cases, the process stops here as the artwork cannot be located. If the artwork is found, the next step is proving ownership.
In an interview conducted with Dr. Caterina Pierre, Professor of Art History at the City University of New York at Kingsborough and Visiting Associate Professor at the Pratt Institute, she said that “Heirs who are claiming an artwork must prove that the piece is legally theirs, which is fair, however proving a right to art is hard to do when your family’s entire home and documents were destroyed. Proof that the artwork was once yours can include a bill of sale, a photograph of you or your ancestor with the artwork, or the death certificate of your ancestor who owned the artwork.”
However, demonstrating ownership through these means, especially for artwork stolen during the Holocaust, is quite difficult.
“There were no death certificates issued for people who died in the concentration camps,” Pierre said. “How would you even prove that the ancestor that owned it is no longer alive? And therefore you are the direct heir of the artwork? As time goes on, the gap between the present day and the Holocaust continues to grow, and we will continue to lose more records and more proof of rights to work.”
In her experience with performing research on Nazi-looted art, Lisa Duffy-Zebalos, Director of Art Research at the International Foundation for Art Research, said in an interview that “the process of returning art to its owners is tedious and exhausting, In addition to providing proof that they are the rightful heirs to the artwork, the descendants must prove that the artwork was surrendered under duress. They need to build their evidence. There are options, but sometimes it is still impossible to prove, and a lot of people hit a roadblock.”
While returning stolen artwork is morally correct, the purchaser who bought the work in good faith rarely gets any compensation aside from knowing that they did the right thing, and the money spent on the piece is not recovered.
“Museums and private collectors have the burden of doing their due diligence to check provenance on artworks they own or plan to purchase, meaning they need to research the history and ownership of an artwork before purchasing it or accepting it as a donation,” Pierre said.
The same applies to an auction house or gallery that accepts an artwork for sale.
“If they don’t do this and they purchase an artwork, even if it’s in good faith, they are subject to caveat emptor, which essentially means ‘let the buyer beware,’” Pierre said.
Duffy-Zebalos shared her thoughts on museums’ responsibility.
“American museums and private collectors have a civic responsibility to do their due diligence and to flag works in their collections that have gaps in provenance from the relevant Holocaust years, generally 1933 to 1945,” Duffy-Zebalos said. “It’s in their own best interest to have a work that is free from potential litigation. They need to show that you made a good faith effort to investigate the provenance, whether that’s running a search for the piece on the Art Loss Register or hiring a provenance researcher to investigate the history of the piece. No one is immune to doing their research.”
The big question is whether museums, private collectors, and galleries must return art they know is Nazi-looted art.
“People have strong views on this subject,” said Raymond J. Dowd, the attorney for the Grünbaum heirs. “One view is that if museums aren’t returning stolen art to the rightful owners, they are committing a crime and it’s wrong and they ought to return it. Others believe that it’s a public good to keep stolen property in museums for everyone to see.”
Holding or receiving stolen property is a crime. It’s important to recognize the difference between art being in the hands of its rightful owners, whether the owners choose to sell the pieces, keep them in a private collection, or donate them to a museum versus art being kept in the hands of an unlawful owner, thereby denying the rightful heirs access to their true inheritance.
If you’re interested in learning more about Nazi looting and restitution, these books are a great place to start:
- “The Rape of Europa” by Lynn H. Nichols
- “The Lady in Gold by Anne-Marie O’Connor” (The movie “The Woman in Gold” with Ryan Reynolds is loosely based on this book)
- “Monuments Men” by Robert M. Edsel (also a movie with George Clooney)
- “Orpheus Clock” by Simon Goodman
- “Hitler’s Art Thief” by Susan Ronald
- “The Vanished Collection” by Pauline Baer de Perignon
