The Manhattan district attorney’s office agreed to return seven works by Egon Schiele to the heirs of the Jewish art collector murdered in a concentration camp in 1941. The online magazine ARTnews writes about this on September 20.
Schiele’s seven drawings and paintings were returned to Fritz Grünbaum’s heirs during a ceremony at New York’s Supreme Civil Court on September 20.
“Today is a historic and innovative day” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg said at a news conference that took place on the eve of Yom Kippur, one of the most important Jewish holidays.
Each of the Austrian expressionist’s works, returned on September 20, is estimated at between $780,000 and $2.75 million, according to the New York Times.
The return was the result of an investigation by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which was contacted by Grunbaum’s heirs in December. The heirs were forced to do so by a 2018 ruling, according to which collector Richard Nagy returned two works by Schiele.
Nagy planned to sell the art, but Judge Charles V. Ramos ruled that Grünbaum could not sell it voluntarily and that he had renounced his title while in a concentration camp.
The heirs asked Manhattan prosecutors to examine other works by Schiele that previously belonged to Grünbaum and were located in New York or were bought and sold by the American art dealer Otto Kallir. These works, they argued, could constitute stolen property as defined by New York law.
For more than 25 years, Grünbaum’s heirs claimed that he and his wife were forced to sell their property and large art collection during their internment in Dachau.
According to the lawsuit against MoMA, Jewish ownership declaration documents show that 81 works of art from the Grünbaum collection became property of the Nazis.
Source: Rossa Primavera
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