Dead City III

Dead City III (German: Tote Stadt III) is an oil on wood expressionist painting by Egon Schiele from 1911. It was owned by the Viennese cabaret artist Fritz Grünbaum before he was murdered by Nazis and has been the object of high-profile disputes and court battles. Suspected by New York's District Attorney of having been looted by the Nazis, Dead City III was temporarily confiscated from the Austrian art collector Rudolf Leopold after he loaned it to a New York museum in 1998.[1] The ownership history of the painting has been the object of high-profile court cases in which two very different versions of the painting's journey from the Jewish Holocaust victim to the Austrian art collector collide.

Dead City III
ArtistEgon Schiele
Year1911
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions37.3 cm × 29.8 cm (14.7 in × 11.7 in)
LocationLeopold Museum, Vienna

Description

Dead City III is a small painting on wood with the dimensions 37.3 × 29.8 centimeters. It is a variation of the repeated executed motif by the artist of a view of the Bohemian town of Český Krumlov, known in German as Krumau, as seen from the castle hill. It is the birthplace of Schiele's mother, to where the painter repeatedly withdrew from Viennese city life.[2] The picture shows a group of houses, enclosed on three sides by a deep blue ring symbolizing the Vltava, so that the village seems isolated and like floating in an indefinable, abstract space. The painting shows the artist's development, using representations of nature not only as expressions for moods and sensations, but as carriers of deep content. The city becomes a still life in the best sense of a nature morte, "emerging from the dark in a mysterious and visionary manner".[3]

Provenance

The provenance of Dead City III has been hotly contested. Two different versions have been presented, one by the heirs to Fritz Grünbaum and his wife, both murdered by Nazis in the Holocaust, and other by the Leopold Museum, in its court defense.[4][5][6][7]

Tote Stadt III was bought directly from the artist by the art historian Arthur Roessler (1877–1955), resold by him to the lawyer Alfred Spitzer (1861–1923) and finally acquired between 1925 and 1928 by the Viennese cabaret artist Fritz Grünbaum (1880–1941). Grünbaum died in the Dachau concentration camp, while is wife Lilly Grünbaum (1898–1942) was deported to the Maly Trostinez extermination camp. In 1958 the art dealer Otto Kallir sold Dead City III to the Austrian art collector Rudolf Leopold who amassed a large collection of Schiele's works.[8]

According to the Leopold Museum's version of the provenance, which it submitted in court documents, Lilly Grünbaum was able to take parts of Grünbaum's art collection to Belgium[9] and transfer them to her sister, Mathilde Lukacs, who, according the Leopold Museum's provenance researcher, sold Dead City III on 22 May 1956 to the art dealer Klipstein & Kornfeld in Bern, from where it was resold on 24 September 1956 to Otto Kallir, owner of the St. Etienne Gallery in New York, who sold it, in 1958, to Rudolf Leopold.

The museum's version of the story was vigorously challenged by the Grünbaum family which stated that it was false. According to the family of Fritz Grünbaum, the story about Lilly Grünbaum selling Dead City III to Otto Kallir was a fiction, created to cover the Nazi looting of the painting.

At a Schiele retrospective in New York at the end of 1997, the painting was seized by the New York public prosecutor's office.[10] The painting was returned to the Leopold Collection in Vienna after the court ruled however that the exhibition at MoMA was protected by "immunity from seizure" by treaty[11][12][13] The legal battle over the portrait of Wally lasted until July 2010.

The Grünbaum collection included 81 artworks by Schiele several which have been restituted after having been acknowledged to have been looted by the Nazis.[14]

Literature
  • Gunnar Schnabel, Monika Tatzkow: Nazi Looted Art. Handbuch Kunstrestitution weltweit. Proprietas-Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-00-019368-2, S. 392 (Fall 66)

See also

References
  1. Dobrzynski, Judith H. (1998-01-08). "District Attorney Enters Dispute Over Artworks". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2013-02-23. Retrieved 2021-06-03. The Manhattan District Attorney moved yesterday to prevent the Museum of Modern Art from returning to Austria two paintings from a recent show whose provenance is clouded by Nazi wartime plundering. He said he would begin a criminal investigation into ownership of the artwork.
  2. Mrazek (mrazek@ckrumlov.cz), Lubor. "Schiele und Krumau | Egon Schiele Art Centrum - Galerie Český Krumlov". info.ckrumlov.info (in German). Retrieved 2021-05-24.
  3. Schiele, Egon (1975). Egon Schiele. Erwin Mitsch (2. Aufl. 13. bis 22. Tausend. Ungekürzte Ausg ed.). München: Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag. ISBN 3-423-01064-9. OCLC 4036720.
  4. "Leopold Museum Defends Against Restitution Claims". Artnet News. 2014-11-05. Retrieved 2021-03-29.
  5. "NY Appeals Court Explains Why Nazi-Stolen Paintings Belong With Jewish Collector's Heirs". www.lootedart.com. Archived from the original on 2020-06-24. Retrieved 2021-03-29.
  6. "A Small Victory in Pursuit of Looted Art". lootedart.com. Archived from the original on 2016-08-09. Retrieved 2021-03-29.
  7. "Lauder's Mix of Restitution and Collecting". www.lootedart.com. Archived from the original on 2010-11-24. Retrieved 2021-03-29.
  8. Dobrzynski, Judith H. (1997-12-24). "THE ZEALOUS COLLECTOR -- A special report.; A Singular Passion For Amassing Art, One Way or Another". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2010-03-28. Retrieved 2021-06-03.
  9. "Leopold Museum-Privatstiftung: Dossier Fritz Grünbaum" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2013-05-14.
  10. "Jewish Heirs' Worldwide Fight to Reclaim Nazi-Stolen Art Plays Out in Manhattan Courts". www.lootedart.com. Archived from the original on 2019-05-01. Retrieved 2021-03-29.
  11. "Nazi art looting restitution settlement agreement leads to Christie's auction of rare artwork". www.lootedart.com. Archived from the original on 2016-08-09. Retrieved 2021-03-29.
  12. "Museum wins dispute over art allegedly stolen by Nazis". www.lootedart.com. Archived from the original on 2010-11-24. Retrieved 2021-03-29.
  13. "Settlement close on Portrait of Wally case". www.lootedart.com. Archived from the original on 2010-11-24. Retrieved 2021-03-29.
  14. "1941: A cabaret comic who mocked the Nazis dies in Dachau". Haaretz. Archived from the original on 2020-08-15. Retrieved 2021-06-03. Gruenbaum's art collection included 81 pieces by the Viennese Expressionist artist Egon Schiele (1890-1918). Two of these, "Seated Woman with Bent Leg" (gouache and crayon, 1917) and "Town on the Blue River" (watercolor, 1910), were offered for sale at auction in New York last November, at Sotheby's and Christie's, respectively. In the case of "Town on the Blue River," Christie's and the estate selling the painting both acknowledged that it had been looted and agreed to give a percentage of the sale to Gruenbaum's heirs.
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