EFE Agency 04/24/2024 12:16h.
Missing Gustav Klimt painting goes up for auction in ViennaEFE
The work will have an estimated initial value of 30 or 50 million euros, although there may be surprises as confirmed by experts
The work was commissioned by a Jewish family who paid 120,000 euros in advance and much more money upon delivery.
The work has aroused much expectation at the auction, whose interest is increased by the anonymous identity of the painting’s model.
The mysterious missing painting by the painter Gustav Klimt, which had been missing for more than 100 years, has appeared to be auctioned in Vienna. The auction has generated great expectation given the work’s whereabouts unknown for years. In fact, such is the interest placed on this painting that its initial value is 30 or 50 million euros.
Claudia Mörth-Gasser, from im Kinsky, the auction house in charge of organizing this great sale, assures that “it is a painting with which there can be surprises, whenever paintings by Klimt have appeared at auction, they have obtained very good climbs. What we can say is that the estimate price is moderately set.”
From this work, it is known that the painter received 10,000 crowns in advance and it is estimated that he would have received many more when delivering this finished piece. The painting was commissioned by the Liesera family of businessmen Jews who suffered Nazi persecution when Austria joined the German Reich in 1938.
The painting was commissioned by a Jewish family that had to flee the Nazi regime
Track of this work was lost in 1925, the year of which it is a black and white photo taken for preparations for a Klimt retrospective held the following year, and in which it is not even known if it was ever exhibited. Today it is known that it was sold and that since the decade of 1960 He was in a mansion on the outskirts of Vienna. Several family members had to flee Austria during Nazism and Lilly Lieser, a well-known patron, was murdered in the extermination camp of Auschwitz.
After World War II, his daughters returned to Austria and reclaimed property confiscated by the Nazis, but the painting is not mentioned in that petition.
18 months ago, Ernst Ploil, one of im Kinsky’s managers and an expert art expert, received a call from someone who said he had inherited the painting and asked for help auctioning it. The auction house began a thorough investigation that has concluded that there is no evidence whether or not the work was looted between 1938 and 1945, during the Nazi dictatorship in Austria. For this reason, Ploil says, the house asked the current owner the condition of reaching an agreement with the Lieser heirs.
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The auction has aroused great international interest among people
“The agreement is that they auction together and distribute the proceeds,” summarizes Ploil, who affirms that in this way any possible injustice is overcome and provides legal certainty. This lawyer describes this treatment as an example of good practice, in a country that until relatively recently made it very difficult for descendants of victims of Nazism to recover what was stolen.
Mörth-Gasser anticipates that the auction has awakened international interest and that it is difficult to know what the dynamics will be like tomorrow, but he is confident that the fact that the estimated value is so “moderate” can contribute to raising the bids. Something that adds interest to the portrait is that it is not known who the model is, but it is believed that she may be Lilly Lieser’s niece or, more likely, one of her daughters.
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