[MSN] Klimt painting fuels Holocaust claim dispute

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Klimt painting fuels Holocaust claim dispute

(live-PR.com) - NEW YORK (AP) - The grandson of an Austrian woman killed by the Nazis is demanding restitution for a Gustav Klimt painting owned by cosmetics magnate Leonard Lauder.

Lauder had purchased «Blooming Meadow» in 1983 from the late Serge Sabarsky, who founded a gallery that has exhibited five other Klimt works linked to the Holocaust.
Manhattan's Neue Galerie, which is opening a Klimt retrospective on Oct. 18, was founded by Sabarsky and Lauder's brother, Ronald Lauder. The painting in question is not in the show.
Georges Jorisch, 79, says his grandmother's property was stolen after she was deported by the Nazis to the ghetto in the city of Lodz in Poland in 1941. Leonard Lauder says the work never belonged to Jorisch's grandmother.
Jorisch believes the painting was first acquired by his grandmother's brother, Viktor Zuckerkandl, a Viennese steel magnate and friend of Klimt. After Zuckerkandl's death in 1926, the painting passed to Amalie Redlich, according to Jorisch's attorney, E. Randol Schoenberg.
The painting is now part of the New York-based Lauder's extensive collection of 20th-century art.
Jorisch, who lives in Montreal, has not taken any legal action, said Schoenberg, who is based in Los Angeles.
«I hope they'll return the painting or agree to purchase it,» said the attorney, adding that under New York law, he and his client are preparing a letter officially demanding the return of the property, which he says could be worth as much as $20 million (¤14.16 million).
Jorisch has not yet decided whether he wants the painting back or to be compensated for it, Schoenberg said.
Lauder's attorney, Andrew Frackman, said he and his client have been «in discussions» with Schoenberg for five years over the painting.
«We've told Jorisch all along that if in fact his painting belonged to Ms. Redlich, Mr. Lauder would do the right thing,» Frackman said.
The attorney said that he and his client have conducted an «extensive investigation» of documentary evidence from the 1920s and '30s surrounding six Klimt paintings in Zuckerkandl's estate at the time of his death, and «we have satisfied ourselves that Mr. Lauder's painting is not any of those six.
Schoenberg cites a new catalog of Klimt's complete works compiled by Alfred Weidinger, a Klimt expert in Vienna. The catalog says the painting belonged to Jorisch's grandmother and was kept in her family's villa outside Vienna.

Frackman added that he doesn't know why Weidinger reached a different conclusion, leading to his entry of «Blooming Meadow» in the catalog.
According to the catalog, the 1906 «Blooming Meadow» was sold after the war by a gallery in Vienna to a collector, Rudolf Leopold. He then sold it to Sabarsky, who died in 1996.
Last year, Schoenberg was involved with the case of five Klimt paintings belonging to the Viennese Bloch-Bauer family that were returned to a descendant in California, Maria Altmann. They were all exhibited at the Neue Galerie, with long lines of people waiting on Fifth Avenue to see them. Among the paintings was Klimt's portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, which Ronald Lauder purchased for the Neue Galerie, reportedly for $135 million (¤95.56 million).

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