The portrait of Miss Lieserone of the last works of the Austrian modernist painter Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), this Wednesday reached a price of 30 million euros (about 32 million dollars) at an auction in Vienna, much less than expected by some experts. The piece, valued at up to 50 million euros ($53 million), was once commissioned by an Austrian Jewish family and was left unfinished when Klimt died in February 1918, and was missing for almost a century.
The word “disappointment” was the most repeated in the room 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. The auction, which started with 28 million euros, had only three bids before reaching the final 30 million, after repeated appeals for more bids by the auctioneer.
As reported later by the auction house, the final price, including premiums, is 37,406 million euros (about 40 million dollars), which will be paid by the buyer of the painting, the art collection HomeArt (Hong Kong), which already has other works by Klimt. 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.
Claudia Mörth-Gasser, one of the “im Kinsky” experts, assured on the eve of the auction that the valuation of the painting – between 30 and 50 million euros – could be “moderate” and announced that it was possible that a “surprise” could occur with a much higher final price. With everything, The portrait of Miss Lieser It is the most expensive work of art ever auctioned in Austria.
The auction had also generated a lot of interest due to doubts about whether the piece had been stolen during the Nazi dictatorship in Austria (1938-1945) from 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 the Nazis but Lilly Liesera 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 in which it was 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.
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. 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 a niece of Lilly Lieser or, more likely, one of his two daughters.
During the auction, 18 other objects went 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 for 99.2 million euros ($107.5 million), becoming the most expensive work of art ever sold in Europe.
Source: EFE
[Fotos: EFE/EPA/Max Eslovencik; Galería Kinsky Viena; REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger]
