A lost Gustav Klimt painting reappears in Austria

2024-01-26 07:38:37
There was only evidence of the work by a black and white photograph taken in 1925, which could not do justice to the colorful ‘Portrait of Fräulein Lieser’, painted by Gustav Klimt in 1917. It was an inventory card preserved in the collection of the Austrian National Library, along with the note that the painting was “in the possession of Mrs. Lieser in 1925.” The card was probably prepared in the context of the exhibition planned by Otto Kallir-Nirenstein for the Hagenbund (1925) and finally held at the Neue Galerie in 1926. In a note from the Belvedere archive, the gallerist crossed out the work and did not have it. taken into account in the sketch for the hanging. Since then it had remained hidden in private collections and its first public appearance in Bunt, before being auctioned on April 24 in Vienna, for 30 or perhaps 50 million euros, has caused a great sensation. As dictated by Viennese tradition, which affects any marriageable young woman, Fräulein Lieser must comply with an introduction ritual. As published by the weekly Der Standard, the Viennese auction house ‘im Kinsky’ manages a price range that potentially only an international clientele will be willing to pay, which is why it has resorted to a collaboration with the private bank LGT, based in Liechtenstein, which manages more than 300 billion Swiss francs in client assets worldwide, has organized a series of exclusive events that will serve to introduce the painting to potential buyers. The cooperation with “im Kinsky”, in addition to the payment operation, includes a presentation tour of the Klimt painting in LGT subsidiaries abroad, specifically in Switzerland, London, Hong Kong and Tokyo. Also in anticipation of the purchase by an international collector, the Federal Monuments Office has gone ahead to issue an export permit that is already ready. This is because the sale of the work is linked to an “agreement within the meaning of the Washington Principles” between the current owner, who inherited the painting in 2022 from a relative in whose living room it had hung since the 1960s, and the legal successors of Adolf Lieser (1859-1919) and his sister-in-law Henriette Lieser (1875-1943), who was first deported to Riga in 1942 and murdered in Auschwitz in 1943. A strict investigation carried out in recent months He did not find any evidence of confiscation or emergency sale that could hinder the legitimacy of the operation, although the circumstances of the seizure during the Nazi era and the fate of the painting until the 1960s could not be fully clarified. In any case, There has never been a search for the painting by the descendants of the former owners. The starting point of the last investigation was the name of Lieser, which was published as the first owner in the provenance of the three catalogs published from 1967 to 2017, and in whose environment the portrait commission must have taken place. ‘Portrait of Miss Lieser’ (1917) AFP Klimt did not complete the portrait, which remained unsigned. After her death in February 1918, the painting was transferred from her estate to the family who had commissioned it, who belonged to the wealthy Viennese upper middle class. It is not even clear who the young woman portrayed was: in specialized literature she was known last century as “Fräulein Lieser”, until in 1984 the art historian Alice Strobel identified her as Margarethe Constanze Lieser in her catalog raisonné of Klimt’s drawings. . Margarethe was the daughter of Adolf Lieser, who, along with his brother, was one of the leading jute and hemp industrialists of the time, married to Henriette, nicknamed “Lilly.” He was a friend of Alma Mahler and supported composers such as Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg as a patron. Before divorcing in 1905, the couple had two daughters: Helene, the first woman in Austria to obtain a doctorate in political science in 1920, and Annie, a student of Grete Wiesenthal and famous expressionist dancer. The family lived in the palace at Argentinierstrasse 20, in the fourth district, the same address appears on the inventory sheet of the only photograph of the work. Physical features suggest that it is the former. The painting had been considered lost and has never been seen in public and the auction house refers to its presentation as the “find of the century.” The last precedent for a sale of this type was that of the largest portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, painted by Klimt in 1912, which is on loan at the Belvedere until February 11. After its return to Bloch-Bauer’s heirs, Oprah Winfrey acquired it at an auction in New York in 2006 for almost $88 million, and sold it a decade later for $150 million.
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