The portrait of Miss Lieserone of the last works of the Austrian modernist painter Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), reached a price of 30 million euros (about 32 million dollars) at an auction in Vienna this Wednesday, much less than expected by some experts. The word “disappointment” was the most repeated at im Kimsky, the Viennese auction house that last fall was commissioned to organize the sale by the current owner, who had inherited the piece from relatives.
Valued at up to 50 million euros (53 million dollars), was commissioned at the time by an Austrian Jewish family and was left unfinished when Klimt died in February 1918. Since then, it has been missing for almost a century. The auction, which started with 28 million euros, He only had three offers. before reaching the final 30 million, after repeated appeals for more bids by the auctioneer.
The auction had generated a lot of expectation and there had been speculation with a price of up to 70 million euros (75 million dollars), due to the fact that the piece was lost in 1925 and the artistic quality of a painting that already announced a new pictorial stage of the Austrian master.
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Claudia Mörth-Gasser, one of the im Kinsky experts, assured on the eve of the auction in statements to EFE that the valuation of the painting at between 30 and 50 million euros could be “moderate” and announced that it was possible that there would be a “surprise” with a much higher final price. With everything, The portrait of Miss Lieser is the most expensive work of art ever auctioned in Austria.
The auction had also generated a lot of interest in the doubts about whether the piece had been stolen during the Nazi dictatorship in Austria (1938-1945) to the family of Jewish industrialists who commissioned it, and who paid the equivalent of 120,000 current euros for it. Several members of the family managed to flee Austria during Nazism but Lilly Lieser, a well-known patron of the time, was murdered in the Nazi death 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. Track of the work was lost in 1925, the year of which it is a black and white photo taken in preparation for a Klimt retrospective held in 1926, and in which it is not even known if it was ever exhibited. It is now known that at an undetermined time it was sold and that since the 1960s it was in a mansion on the outskirts of Vienna.
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The auction house, which found no evidence that the portrait was looted, made it a condition for organizing the auction that the current owner share the sale amount with the heirs of the Lieser family. It is not known who the model iswhich adds interest to the portrait, but it is believed that she may be a niece of Lilly Lieser or, more likely, one of her two daughters.
During the auction, 18 other objects were put up for sale, including sketches by Klimt, paintings by his compatriot Egon Schiele and sculptures. In June 2023 the Lady with Fan by Klimt was auctioned in London by 99.2 million euros ($107.5 million), and became the most expensive work of art ever sold in Europe.
