NEW YORK.- The justice of NY returned today – July 26 – to the heirs of the Jewish collector, actor and cabaret artist Fritz Grnbaum, who died in the Holocaust, a drawing by the Austrian painter Egon Schiele, which had been looted by the nazis.
The drawing Naked woman sitting It was part of the extensive art collection, which contained more than 80 works by Egon Schiele (1890-1918), from Grnbaum, who died in the Dachau concentration camp in January 1941.
In 1961, this drawing made by Schiele in 1918, shortly before his death, was acquired by Ernst and Helene Papanek, who had fled the Nazi regime in 1938, unaware that it had been stolen.
In 1969 it was given to his son Gustav Papanek, in whose estate it remained until his death in 2022.
Return of the drawing
The Schiele work was returned on Friday in a ceremony at the prosecutor’s office attended by heirs of both families.
“The story of Nazi-looted art is horrific and tragic, and its consequences continue to affect the victims and their families,” said Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
“The recovery of this important work of art, stolen from a prominent Jewish critic of Adolf Hitler, sends a message to the world that crime does not pay and that New York law enforcement has not forgotten the dark lessons of World War II,” he said.
In September last year, the prosecutor’s office returned seven Schiele works held by various American institutions that had been stolen by the Nazis to their owners.
A month later, another work by the Austrian painter was returned by collector Michael Lesh directly to the family and in January of this year two more were recovered by their original owners.
Russian prisoner of war, also by Schiele, remains at the Art Institute of Chicago awaiting its return.
Captured in 1938 following the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, Grünbaum was forced to issue a power of attorney to his wife Elisabeth while in Dachau. She later had to hand over her entire art collection to Nazi officials, who dismissed Schiele’s art as degenerate.
Elisabeth Grnbaum also died in a concentration camp.
After years of being missing, Grnbaum’s works reappeared in Bern (Switzerland) in 1956 and were sold by Eberhard Kornfeld, owner of the G&K auction house, who established a close business relationship with the son of Hitler’s personal art commissioner Cornelius Gurlitt.
Kornfeld sold most of Grnbaum’s Schiele works to Otto Kallir, a New York gallery owner, who, despite knowing their provenance, resold them to institutions and private collectors.
FUENTE: AP