ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO FIGHTS TO RETAIN “LOOTED” SCHIELE WORK
The Art Institute of Chicago in a 132-page court filing rejected the assertion by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s office that an Egon Schiele drawing in its possession had been looted by Nazis. The DA’s office last September attempted to seize the 1916 watercolor-and-pencil-on-paper Russian War Prisoner on the grounds that it was stolen from Austrian Jewish cabaret performer Fritz Grünbaum before he was murdered in Germany’s Dachau concentration camp.
Rather than part with the drawing, the Art Institute requested a seizure in place, which allowed it to hang on to the work. Bragg’s office in February demanded the Art Institute finally turn it over. The museum has refused, contending in its April 23 filing that investigators have provided no evidence that the work ever passed through Nazi hands and asserting that it had been legally sold by Grünbaum’s heirs. The office of Matthew Bogdanos, chief of the Antiquities Trafficking Unit in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, replied to the filing with a statement saying, “We will respond in court.”
The drawing, valued at $1.25 million, is one of about a dozen works by Schiele thought to have been part of a larger collection signed over to the Nazis under duress by Grünbaum in 1938 three years before he was killed at Dachau. Manhattan investigators say that Grünbaum’s wife, Elisabeth, was forced to register the couple’s assets and to deposit his art collection in a Nazi-affiliated Austrian moving and storage facility, Schenker & Co., in 1938 after he was remanded to the death camp. They further believe that the Nazis sold the Schiele works in order to fund the war effort.
The museum in its filing pointed out that while the warehouse where the works are said to have been stored was connected to the Nazis, it was also a legitimate moving service, used by Elisabeth’s sister Mathilde Lukacs when she fled Austria. Additionally, they argue that there is no evidence the collection actually wound up in the facility; rather, they say, the works came into the possession of Lukacs, who was either given them by Elisabeth in 1938 or inherited them after Elisabeth was murdered in 1942.
Museum officials and the DA’s office both agree that the works passed through the hands of Swiss dealer Eberhard Kornfeld. Investigators believe that Kornfeld laundered the works for the Nazis, selling many of them to New York dealer Otto Kallir, who in turn sold them to various museums. The Art Institute, which bought Russian War Prisoner in 1966, asserts that the collection, including its Schiele work, was legally sold to Kornfeld by Lukacs in 1956. Kornfeld (who died last spring) supplied proof of the works’ provenance: Bragg’s office believes it was forged, while the museum says there is no evidence that it is not genuine.
Grünwald’s heirs—US Court of International Trade judge Timothy Reif; David Fraenkel, a cotrustee of the Grünbaum estate, and Milos Vavra—have actively sought the return of the Schiele works, with some success: the Museum of Modern Art and the Morgan Library & Museum, both in New York; the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California; the Carnegie Museums, Pittsburgh; and the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College all returned those in their possession, as did collector Ronald S. Lauder and the estate of collector Serge Sabarsky.
