Art back in Vienna as feud ends
Source: Agencies |
August 24, 2010, Tuesday
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A 12-YEAR battle over the possession of a painting that was stolen from a Jewish Austrian by the Nazis came to a close yesterday when the work by Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele was displayed at a Vienna museum.
The oil painting was returned over the weekend after the Leopold Museum agreed to pay US$19 million as part of the settlement to the estate of art dealer Lea Bondi Jaray, the original owner.
United States authorities had refused to return the painting to the Leopold Museum after it was exhibited in 1998 at the New York Museum of Modern Art because of a claim by her descendants.
Bondi Jaray was forced to sell the painting, "Portrait of Wally," at an unrealistically low price in the prelude to World War II as part of a widespread Nazi campaign that stripped Jews in Austria, Germany and later other European countries of their possessions.
US customs refused to let the work leave the country after Henry Bondi of Princeton, New Jersey, filed a claim that said his late aunt was forced to give up the painting before fleeing Vienna in 1939 to escape to London when Germany annexed Austria. She died in 1969. Henry Bondi also has since died.
The controversy over the portrait, which the Leopold Museum acquired after the war, contributed to Austria passing a 1998 law that stipulates the restitution of property taken from the country's Jews by the Nazis.
"Portrait of Wally" - which pictures Valerie "Wally" Neuzil, a woman Schiele knew and used as a model - was among more than 100 works the Leopold Foundation had leant to MoMA.
Leopold Museum chief Peter Weinhaeupl called the return a "symbolic day" for the museum.
It was created by the late Rudolf Leopold.
The oil painting was returned over the weekend after the Leopold Museum agreed to pay US$19 million as part of the settlement to the estate of art dealer Lea Bondi Jaray, the original owner.
United States authorities had refused to return the painting to the Leopold Museum after it was exhibited in 1998 at the New York Museum of Modern Art because of a claim by her descendants.
Bondi Jaray was forced to sell the painting, "Portrait of Wally," at an unrealistically low price in the prelude to World War II as part of a widespread Nazi campaign that stripped Jews in Austria, Germany and later other European countries of their possessions.
US customs refused to let the work leave the country after Henry Bondi of Princeton, New Jersey, filed a claim that said his late aunt was forced to give up the painting before fleeing Vienna in 1939 to escape to London when Germany annexed Austria. She died in 1969. Henry Bondi also has since died.
The controversy over the portrait, which the Leopold Museum acquired after the war, contributed to Austria passing a 1998 law that stipulates the restitution of property taken from the country's Jews by the Nazis.
"Portrait of Wally" - which pictures Valerie "Wally" Neuzil, a woman Schiele knew and used as a model - was among more than 100 works the Leopold Foundation had leant to MoMA.
Leopold Museum chief Peter Weinhaeupl called the return a "symbolic day" for the museum.
It was created by the late Rudolf Leopold.
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