Latest news with #Schiele
Chicago Tribune
24-04-2025
- Chicago Tribune
Art Institute of Chicago told to surrender drawing to heirs of man killed in Nazi concentration camp
A judge in New York ruled on Wednesday that the Art Institute of Chicago must surrender a 1916 drawing by Egon Schiele to investigators who plan to return it to the heirs of a Jewish cabaret entertainer from Vienna who was murdered in a Nazi concentration camp in 1941. The drawing 'Russian War Prisoner' was purchased by the Art Institute in 1966, but investigators for the Manhattan district attorney's office had asserted that it and other works once owned by entertainer and art collector Fritz Grünbaum had been looted by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Many of the works created by Schiele, the Austrian Expressionist, that Grünbaum owned ended up in the hands of museums and collectors around the world. Grünbaum's heirs have spent years working to reclaim them. In her ruling, New York Supreme Court Judge Althea Drysdale said she agreed that the work had been stolen from Grünbaum by the Nazis. ' 'Russian War Prisoner' has been stolen property for the last 86 years,' she said in a 25-minute reading of her order from the bench. Over the past two years, other museums and private collectors had returned Schiele works to the heirs after being presented evidence by the investigators that they had been seized by the Nazis. But the Art Institute disputed that evidence and challenged the jurisdiction of the Manhattan district attorney to bring what was a criminal proceeding that treated the museum's Schiele as stolen property. In hearings last year, the district attorney's office accused the Chicago museum of ignoring evidence of an elaborate fraud undertaken to conceal that the artwork had been stolen from Grünbaum by the Nazis on the eve of World War II. The museum insisted there was no evidence to suggest the work had been stolen, and it challenged the authority of the investigators to lay claim to a painting that had been located beyond New York for 60 years, arguing that disputes like this are civil matters and that New York criminal law has no place in the discussion. Instead, it said, the drawing had legitimately passed from Grünbaum to his sister-in-law, who had sold it to a Swiss dealer after the war. Its refusal of the art unit's claims represented a sustained and very public battle threatening to undercut the trafficking unit's authority in this case — and by extension, many others. But in her 79-page ruling, Drysdale agreed with the investigators on all points. She found that the work could still be considered stolen property under New York law, that the criminal laws applied and that New York investigators had jurisdiction over the matter. The Manhattan investigators had argued they had jurisdiction because the Schiele works were owned by a New York gallery before being sold on to other owners. She also found that the Art Institute had failed to make reasonable inquiries about the work's provenance when it acquired the work and did not live up to its own standards for provenance research. 'We are disappointed with the ruling,' Megan Michienzi, a spokesperson for the museum, said in a statement. 'We are reviewing the court's decision and will look at all available options for appeal.' These options include applying for a stay on the handover of the work to investigators. Raymond Dowd, the lawyer for the Grünbaum heirs, welcomed the decision. 'This judge wrote a clear warning call to any people in the world who are hiding Nazi looted art that you had better not bring it anywhere near New York. Ever,' he said. The Art Institute routinely displayed the work during its many years at the museum until it was seized in place by investigators in 2023 on the basis of a warrant signed by Drysdale. In her decision, she not only discussed the law but also the history of the work, of Grünbaum and of the artist who created the drawing. 'Throughout his storied career, Grünbaum was an outspoken critic of the treatment of Jews in Austria,' she wrote. 'This advocacy, coupled with his Jewish heritage and his fame within Vienna's performing arts industry, would lead to his capture, imprisonment at Dachau Concentration Camp, and murder at the hands of the Nazis during World War II.' At the center of the dispute was the question of what happened to the drawing and other Schiele works when they were deposited by Grünbaum's family at a storage facility in Vienna in 1938. Investigators in the Manhattan district attorney's art trafficking unit maintained that this was tantamount to surrendering them to the Nazis, who they say controlled the warehouse. The museum said that while the storage company had been 'affiliated' with the Nazi regime, it 'also provided lawful storage and moving services to Jewish families' including to Grünbaum's sister-in-law, Mathilde Lukacs, who the museum argued had inherited the drawing and others from the entertainer's collection. The dealer who brought 'Russian War Prisoner' and other Schieles once owned by Grünbaum to the New York art market in the 1950s, Eberhard Kornfeld, said he had bought them from Lukacs. The museum said it believed his account to be credible. But the New York investigators worked to compile evidence that the judge embraced as a convincing rebuttal of Kornfeld's account. She noted that investigators dismissed as forgeries the several invoices that Kornfeld produced as evidence of his transactions with Lukacs. On some the signature for her name was misspelled, for example. 'It's highly improbable that Mathilde Lukacs ever obtained proper title to 'Russian War Prisoner,' ' Drysdale said, and she suggested the museum needed to have done more to investigate the work's ownership trail. 'They instead relied upon the assurances of a discredited art dealer with an obvious self-serving agenda,' she wrote in her ruling. Before Manhattan investigators entered the debate, the Grünbaum artworks had already been the subject of considerable civil litigation in which other courts have come to varying conclusions. In 2018, a New York Supreme Court judge ruled in the case of two other Schiele drawings that Grünbaum never sold or surrendered any works before his death, and that they were indeed looted by the Nazis, making his heirs their true owners. In another civil case, a federal court ruled on procedural grounds that the Grünbaum heirs came forward too late to lay claim to the works and described Kornfeld's account as credible. 'Russian War Prisoner' is also the subject of a separate civil case in federal court in New York in which the Art Institute is arguing it has good title to the drawing. Dowd, who represents the Grünbaum heirs, said that he did not think 'the federal procedure survives' Drysdale's decision.
New York Times
23-04-2025
- New York Times
Museum Told to Surrender Schiele Drawing to Heirs of Man Killed by Nazis
A judge in New York ruled on Wednesday that the Art Institute of Chicago must surrender a 1916 drawing by Egon Schiele to investigators who plan to return it to the heirs of a Jewish cabaret entertainer from Vienna who was murdered in a Nazi concentration camp in 1941. The drawing 'Russian War Prisoner' was purchased by the Art Institute in 1966, but investigators for the Manhattan district attorney's office had found that it and other works once owned by the entertainer and art collector Fritz Grünbaum had been looted by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Many of the works created by Schiele, the Austrian Expressionist, that Mr. Grünbaum owned ended up in the hands of museums and collectors around the world. Mr. Grünbaum's heirs have spent years working to reclaim them. In her ruling, New York Supreme Court Judge Althea Drysdale said she agreed that the work had been stolen from Mr. Grünbaum by the Nazis. ''Russian War Prisoner' has been stolen property for the last 86 years,' she said in a 25-minute reading of her order from the bench. Over the past two years, other museums and private collectors had returned Schiele works to the heirs after being presented evidence by the investigators that they had been seized by the Nazis. But the Art Institute disputed that evidence and challenged the jurisdiction of the Manhattan district attorney to bring what in fact was a criminal proceeding that treated the museum's Schiele as stolen property. In hearings last year, the district attorney's office accused the Chicago museum of ignoring evidence of an elaborate fraud undertaken to conceal that the artwork had been stolen from Mr. Grünbaum by the Nazis on the eve of World War II. For its part, the museum insisted there was no evidence to suggest the work had been stolen, and it challenged the authority of the investigators to lay claim to a painting that had been located beyond New York for 60 years, arguing that disputes like this are civil matters and that New York criminal law has no place in the discussion. Instead, it said, the drawing had legitimately passed from Mr. Grünbaum to his sister-in-law, who had sold it to a Swiss dealer after the war. Its refusal of the art unit's claims represented a sustained and very public battle threatening to undercut the trafficking unit's authority in this case — and by extension, many others. But in her 79-page ruling, Judge Drysdale agreed with the investigators on all points. She found that the work could still be considered stolen property under New York law, that the criminal laws applied and that New York investigators had jurisdiction over the matter. The Manhattan investigators had argued they had jurisdiction because the Schiele works were owned by a New York gallery before being sold on to other owners. She also found that the Art Institute had failed to make reasonable inquiries about the work's provenance when it acquired the work and did not live up to its own standards for provenance research. 'We are disappointed with the ruling,' Megan Michienzi, a spokeswoman for the museum, said in a statement. 'We are reviewing the court's decision and will look at all available options for appeal.' These options include applying for a stay on the handover of the work to investigators. Raymond Dowd, the lawyer for the Grünbaum heirs, welcomed the decision. 'This judge wrote a clear warning call to any people in the world who are hiding Nazi looted art that you had better not bring it anywhere near New York. Ever,' he said. The Art Institute routinely displayed the work during its many years at the museum until it was seized in place by investigators in 2023 on the basis of a warrant signed by Judge Drysdale. In her decision, she not only discussed the law but also the history of the work, of Mr. Grünbaum and of the artist who created the drawing. 'Throughout his storied career, Grünbaum was an outspoken critic of the treatment of Jews in Austria,' she wrote. 'This advocacy, coupled with his Jewish heritage and his fame within Vienna's performing arts industry, would lead to his capture, imprisonment at Dachau Concentration Camp, and murder at the hands of the Nazis during World War II.' At the center of the dispute was the question of what happened to the drawing and other Schiele works when they were deposited by Mr. Grünbaum's family at a storage facility in Vienna in 1938. Investigators in the Manhattan district attorney's art trafficking unit maintained that this was tantamount to surrendering them to the Nazis, who they say controlled the warehouse. The museum said that while the storage company had been 'affiliated' with the Nazi regime, it 'also provided lawful storage and moving services to Jewish families' including to Mr. Grünbaum's sister-in-law, Mathilde Lukacs, who the museum argued had inherited the drawing and others from the entertainer's collection. The dealer who brought 'Russian War Prisoner' and other Schieles once owned by Grünbaum to the New York art market in the 1950s, Eberhard Kornfeld, said he had bought them from Ms. Lukacs. The museum said it believed his account to be credible. But the New York investigators worked to compile evidence that the judge embraced as a convincing rebuttal of Mr. Kornfeld's account. She noted that investigators dismissed as forgeries the several invoices that Mr. Kornfeld produced as evidence of his transactions with Ms. Lukacs. On some the signature for her name was misspelled, for example. 'It's highly improbable that Mathilde Lukacs ever obtained proper title to 'Russian War Prisoner,'' Judge Drysdale said, and she suggested the museum needed to have done more to investigate the work's ownership trail. 'They instead relied upon the assurances of a discredited art dealer with an obvious self-serving agenda,' she wrote in her ruling. Before Manhattan investigators entered the debate, the Grünbaum artworks had already been the subject of considerable civil litigation in which other courts have come to varying conclusions. In 2018, a New York Supreme Court judge ruled in the case of two other Schiele drawings that Mr. Grünbaum never sold or surrendered any works before his death, and that they were indeed looted by the Nazis, making his heirs their true owners. In another civil case, a federal court ruled on procedural grounds that the Grünbaum heirs came forward too late to lay claim to the works and described Mr. Kornfeld's account as credible. 'Russian War Prisoner' is also the subject of a separate civil case in federal court in New York in which the Art Institute is arguing it has good title to the drawing. Mr. Dowd, who represents the Grünbaum heirs, said that he did not think 'the federal procedure survives' Judge Drysdale's decision.
New York Times
26-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
When the Wild Child Egon Schiele Grew Up
On Oct. 27, 1918, Egon Schiele sketched his wife, Edith, pregnant and feverish in bed. She died from influenza the next day. He died three days later. Edith, 25, and Egon Schiele, 28, were two of an estimated 50 million victims of the flu pandemic that began sweeping through Europe that year. For almost a decade, Schiele had depicted his intimate life in artworks, creating some 3,000 drawings and 400 paintings, and he continued drawing until the end. Today, Schiele is often associated with the erotically charged nude portraits he made from the moment he dropped out of Vienna's Academy of Fine Arts in 1909 until about 1914. His more mature and sober works are often overlooked, said Kerstin Jesse, a senior curator at the Leopold Museum in Vienna. A new exhibition at the museum, 'Changing Times: Egon Schiele's Last Years, 1914–1918,' which opens Friday and runs through July 13, attempts to change that. Some 130 original works by the artist, as well as dozens of personal documents, provide a new glimpse into Schiele's late career. 'I wouldn't say that the later work is better than the earlier work, or vice versa,' said Jane Kallir, who curated the exhibition with Jesse. 'They're just very distinctly different periods in Schiele's life and in his creativity.' The early works, which Kallir called Schiele's 'expressionist breakthrough,' used sharp lines and muted colors to render sensual and twisted nudes, often figures from Vienna's demimonde. In 1912, he was arrested, charged with presenting indecent drawings, and he spent 24 days in jail. He also had a notorious love affair with his strawberry blonde model, Walburga Neuzil, who was 16 years old when he immortalized her in his famous 1912 oil painting, 'Portrait of Wally Neuzil.' Schiele's wild life ended after World War I broke out in 1914. His sister, Gerti, settled down with Anton Peschka, his best friend. The couple, whose first child had been born before the marriage and sent to live with her grandmother, had a second child. Becoming an uncle changed the artist's perspective on relationships, parenthood and women, making him more thoughtful and serious, Kallir said. His paintings shifted attention to his sitters' emotional lives, rather than their postures or sexuality. He began to focus, Kallir added, 'on the human psyche. He is really capturing the individuality of other people.' His skills as an artist also developed, she added. 'There's a technical mastery in terms of his control of the medium of drawing and painting,' Kallir said. 'While the drawing style becomes more classically beautiful, with more volume, more realism, the painting style is actually more expressionistic, and you see much bolder impasto and brighter colors.' In 1915, Schiele married Edith Harms, a demure middle-class woman closer to his age, after cutting ties with Neuzil. Edith's diary, a gift from Schiele before their wedding, reveals intimate details about their mostly unhappy life. The diary is on display in the show and published for the first time in the catalog. After a quick honeymoon, Schiele had to go into the military. He left Edith in a hotel in Prague with little money and some sketches he told her to sell for food. Schiele detested military service and wrote to many contacts seeking escape. An antiques dealer named Karl Grünwald managed to get him transferred to a military supply depot in Vienna in January 1917, with relatively few responsibilities, so he could once again concentrate on his art. During the final year of his life, many of Schiele's creative goals began to crystallize. His new stature was confirmed by a sold-out exhibition at the prestigious Vienna Secession in March 1918. 'Schiele was an artist whose mission was to reconcile contradictions of realism and expressionism, psychological insight and spirituality,' Kallir explained, 'and he was always grappling with these elements. He reaches a different point in terms of amalgamating them in the later works.' 'You can see that his line got more organic, calmer, less jerky,' Jesse said of the artist's later portraits. 'His early works show these very emaciated figures, but later, his bodies started to have life in them, they had a heartbeat, and they begin to seem alive.' But as a new sense of liveliness was taking hold in his work, the pandemic that would kill him was also gathering pace. Influenza began spreading after World War I, and in February 1918, Gustav Klimt, Schiele's friend and mentor, died from a stroke and pneumonia likely brought on by the flu. (Schiele depicted him in the drawing 'Head of the Dead Gustav Klimt'). Schiele became Austria's new reigning artist and sold everything at his Vienna Secession exhibition. His last oil painting, a portrait of his friend the painter Albert Paris von Gütersloh, shows that Schiele was 'at the peak of his artistic powers,' when he died on Oct. 31, 1918, Kallir said. It's hard to imagine what Schiele might have created if he'd had more time, but his contribution to art history, said Jesse, was already immense. 'Some artists made the same number of works in careers that lasted 50 or 60 years,' she said. 'He died suddenly, so we don't know which way he was going.'
Reuters
10-03-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Kirkland dealmaker Schiele joins Paul Hastings, bets on deal rebound
March 10 (Reuters) - Leading New York dealmaker Eric Schiele has left law firm Kirkland & Ellis to join Paul Hastings on Monday as a leader of the firm's mergers and acquisitions practice. Schiele recently co-led the Kirkland team that advised Cheez-It maker Kellanova in its nearly $36 billion acquisition by family-owned candy giant Mars. His other clients have included AbbVie, Disney, Constellation Brands, Time Warner, Amcor and Wynn Resorts. Schiele told Reuters a slump in M&A is likely temporary and should improve when the Trump administration's antitrust and economic policy agenda comes into clearer focus. Uncertainty over policy and economic changes has cast a chill over the deal market, and the pace of U.S. M&A in the first two months of 2025 was the weakest since the financial crisis. Schiele said the market is in a period of transition as it adjusts to Trump's moves on tariffs and trade. He said he had not predicted an immediate surge in deals with the change in administrations, despite the Republican president's promise of less regulation and a broadly pro-business stance. "I think anybody who was expecting it to be a hockey stick change as soon as the sentiment of the regulators changed ... was destined to be a little bit disappointed," he said of the deal market. Schiele spent the past seven years at Kirkland, which he joined in 2018 from Cravath, Swaine & Moore. At Paul Hastings, he will be a partner and global co-chair of the firm's M&A practice. Kirkland, the world's largest law firm by revenue, is a top adviser on M&A deals. The firm was again the top principal adviser in the London Stock Exchange Group rankings in 2024 by deal value. It was also the top adviser on global announced deals by value among firms that advised any party in a transaction. Paul Hastings, which did not rank in the top 25 of global deal advisers last year, came in 23rd among announced deals by value with any U.S. involvement. The firm's recent M&A deal work has included advising packaging products maker Pactiv Evergreen in a $6.7 billion acquisition by rival Novolex. Schiele said he aims to expand large-scale M&A at Paul Hastings by making sure the firm attracts deal work from its existing clients in other practices. A Kirkland spokesperson said the firm thanks Schiele for his contributions. Among other M&A moves, Davis Polk & Wardwell on Monday hired Michael Diz from Debevoise & Plimpton, where he was a co-leader of the M&A practice and of its San Francisco office.
New York Times
02-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Egon Schiele's Art Draws New Audiences
The explosion of modern art and scientific thought in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century holds an enduring fascination. And perhaps no painter better captures the sense of liberation and latent crisis of that era — the era of Freud and Mahler — than Egon Schiele. While his self-portraits may be the first works that come to mind, more than half of Schiele's output on paper are depictions of women. Drawings and paintings by Schiele have been subject to bitter legal disputes following theft and confiscation from Jewish owners during World War II. But that has not affected interest from collectors and museums, which remains robust, if not on the upswing, as Viennese modernists find an audience in Asia. Earlier this year, the National Museum of Korea in Seoul presented 'Vienna 1900, The Dreaming Artists — From Gustav Klimt to Egon Schiele.' The show, in collaboration with the Leopold Museum in Vienna, drew some 80,000 visitors during its first month. Back at home in Vienna, from March 28 to July 13, the Leopold will present 'Changing Times. Egon Schiele's Last Years: 1914-1918.' And at this year's edition of TEFAF Maastricht in the Netherlands, the Vienna gallery Wienerroither & Kohlbacher will include in its booth a drawing of Schiele's muse and girlfriend, Wally Neuzil, and a watercolor of the artist's youngest sister, Gertrude. Jane Kallir, the art historian and founder of the Kallir Research Institute, will co-curate the upcoming show at the Leopold with Kerstin Jesse, one of the museum's senior curators. In a video interview from New York, Kallir said that although the artist 'doesn't fit into any predetermined movement, every generation seems to discover him anew and project onto him their emergent concerns as they enter adulthood.' The fascination of young viewers with Schiele is not a coincidence, as his best-known work was created at an early age. 'People often forget that he wasn't yet 20 in the beginning of 1910 when he began doing these really radical red nudes,' she said. His work emerged in the wake of Freud's theories about sexuality and revolutionary movements not just in visual art but also design and music. Born in 1890 in the state of Lower Austria, Schiele was admitted to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts at age 16. In 1918, having established himself as a leading artist, he died of the Spanish flu. His penchant for depicting adolescent figures led to friction with the Austrian establishment. In 1912, Schiele was held in prison for almost a month on accusations of having abducted and sexually assaulted the teenage daughter of a retired naval officer who spent the night at his house outside Vienna. While those charges were dropped at trial, he was ultimately sentenced briefly for an offense against public morality for exposing young visitors in his studio to his sexually explicit drawings. For Kallir, the artist faced a 'double standard' in a society that 'on the one hand pretends sex doesn't exist and on the other has a teeming underworld of prostitution.' By 1914, although Schiele has since been faulted for becoming more bourgeois and conventional, Kallir said that the artist had learned 'the rules' that Klimt had more closely respected and was compensated financially 'in the manner to which he was always entitled.' 'Suddenly, like Klimt, he has a studio full of models and is dashing off these sheets very quickly,' she said, adding that 'there are drawings which are absolutely breathtaking in their perfection.' The 1912 drawing of a standing, seminude Wally Neuzil that will be on sale in Maastricht most likely emerged after the artist's imprisonment. 'There is a definite stylistic change in Schiele's approach between the first months of that year and the second part,' Kallir said. 'He becomes more aggressive; he's using a softer pencil; and the lines become much firmer and stronger.' Lui Wienerroither, who together with his business partner Ebi Kohlbacher, has made their gallery a foremost destination for acquiring works by Schiele, Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka, said that the drawing of Wally 'reveals a human being as she is, also in her seductive qualities.' Wienerroither said he saw a connection between the position of her head and her direct gaze in the drawing to the famous oil painting 'Portrait of Wally Neuzil' that hangs in the Leopold Museum and was the subject of a protracted legal battle. The painting's original owner, the art dealer Lea Bondi Jaray, had corresponded extensively with Otto Kallir, Jane Kallir's grandfather, who introduced the Viennese modernists to New Yorkers. Otto Kallir's first show of Schiele at the Gallery St. Etienne in 1941 sold not a single work. He wasn't able to sell a Schiele painting until a decade later, when the Minneapolis Institute of Art bought a portrait of Albert Paris von Gütersloh it still owns today. Last year, Wienerroither & Kohlbacher collaborated with Jane Kallir on a tribute to her grandfather with a show that traveled from Vienna to their partner gallery in New York, Shepherd W&K Galleries. Otto Kallir's original gallery in Vienna, now the 'Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder,' was simultaneously the site of an exhibit that explored the space's history from 1923 to 1954. Schiele's work was declared degenerate by the Nazis, who singled out Expressionist art, and did not reassume his place in Europe until after the war. Rudolf Leopold played a central role, gathering Schiele works for a 1955 show at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and eventually consolidating his collection at the Leopold. For Mr. Wienerroither, Schiele's 'confrontation with the self' paved the way for contemporary Austrian artists such as Arnulf Rainer and Elke Silvia Krystufek, (both of whom he represents). As the world becomes 'increasingly conservative and restrictive,' he said, 'Schiele has as much to say today as he did back then.'
