The Artwork Institute of Chicago is contesting a New York court docket order to restitute Russian Battle Prisoner (1916), a drawing by Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele, to heirs of it’s unique proprietor. The museum has secured a short lived keep whereas it pursues an enchantment.
The ruling, issued by Justice Althea Drysdale in April, follows a broader push by the Manhattan District Lawyer’s workplace to return Nazi-looted artworks to relative of it’s unique proprietor Fritz Grünbaum, a Jewish artwork collector who was interned in a Nazi focus camp, the place he died.
The Schiele drawing was seized in situ from the museum in September 2023 and stays off view.
“We’re dissatisfied with the ruling,” a spokesperson for the museum mentioned, including that earlier courts had discovered the museum’s provenance proof credible. A federal court docket dismissed a separate civil go well with over the drawing in March, citing statute of limitations points.
Grünbaum’s heirs argue the Schiele works had been offered illegally after his detainment and by no means recovered by the household. They dispute the legality of a 1956 sale to Swiss seller Eberhard Kornfeld, alleging it was facilitated by means of paperwork that sellers cast. Kornfeld offered extensively to Otto Kallir, a central determine in gross sales of artwork by Schiele after the battle, offering U.S. authorities with jurisdiction.
Drysdale’s April determination discovered New York authorities offered credible evident the sale wasn’t reliable.
The Grünbaum heirs have already recovered quite a few Schiele works from different main U.S. establishments together with MoMA, the Morgan Library, and the Carnegie Museums.
