2 artworks returned to heirs of Holocaust victim. Another is tied up in court
NEW YORK — New York prosecutors on Friday returned two works of art they say were stolen by the Nazis from a Jewish artist and collector killed during the Holocaust.
The artworks have been surrendered by museums in Pittsburgh and Ohio, but prosecutors are still fighting in court to get back the third artwork by the same artist, Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele, that was looted from a Chicago museum at the same time.
On Friday, the estate of Holocaust victim Fritz Grünbaum accepted “Portrait of a Man,” consigned by the Carnegie Museum of Art, and “Girl with Black Hair,” consigned by the Allen Memorial Art Museum of Oberlin College. Prosecutors have collectively valued the two pieces at about $2.5 million.
Ten of Schiele’s works have since been returned to the family, but “Russian War Prisoner” remains at the Art Institute of Chicago, which claims it was acquired legally.
Grünbaum was the son of a Jewish art dealer and law student who began performing in cabarets in Vienna in 1906. When the Nazis came to power, he mocked them, once saying on a darkened stage, “I can’t see anything.” not a single thing; I must have ended up in the National Socialist culture.”
In 1938 he was captured by Nazi officials, who created a trail of paperwork. Prosecutors in Manhattan say they forced him to give power of attorney to his wife, then forced her to hand over the art — including about eighty Schiele works — to Nazi officials. Some of the art was sold to fund the Nazi war effort, they say. Elizabeth and Fritz Grünbaum died in concentration camps.
Prosecutors say the works reappeared in Switzerland in 1956 as part of a shady art deal with members of the Nazi regime that led to them being sold in New York galleries.
On Friday, one of Grünbaum’s heirs thanked leaders of Oberlin College and the Carnegie Institute, saying they had “done the right thing.”
“This is a victory for justice and the memory of a courageous artist, art collector and opponent of fascism,” said Timothy Reif, Grünbaum’s great-grandnephew and a federal judge in New York City, in a statement released by District Attorney Alvin’s office Bragg of Manhattan. “As heirs of Fritz Grünbaum, we are happy that this man who fought for what was right in his own time continues to make the world a fairer place.”
A New York judge ruled in 2018 that two other works by Schiele should be transferred to Grünbaum’s heirs under the Holocaust Expropriated Recovery Act passed by Congress.
In that case, art dealer Richard Nagy said he was the rightful owner of the works because Grünbaum’s sister-in-law sold them after his death. But the judge in the case ruled that there was no evidence that Grünbaum had voluntarily given them to her, writing that it was “a signature at gunpoint.”
However, the Art Institute of Chicago disputes that. And it is claimed that the ‘Russian Prisoner of War’, a pencil and watercolor piece, was acquired legally.
“We have conducted extensive research into the provenance history of this work and are confident in our legal ownership of the piece,” said Megan Michienzi, spokesperson for the Art Institute of Chicago.
Michienzi pointed to an earlier 2010 ruling by another federal judge in which she said that “explicitly ruled that Grünbaum’s Schiele art collection was ‘not looted’ and ‘remained in the possession of the Grünbaum family’ and was sold by Grünbaum’s sister-in-law Fritz Grünbaum.
Reif and his relatives had been fighting for the return of the work in a separate federal civil lawsuit. The Art Institute of Chicago had the case dismissed on technical grounds in November, successfully arguing that, unlike the Nagy case, the family had missed a deadline for the lawsuit under the Holocaust Expropriated Recovery Act.
After that case was dismissed, Bragg’s office asked a Manhattan court earlier this month to authorize the artwork’s return.