The Art Institute of Chicago is contesting a New York court docket order to restitute Russian Conflict Prisoner (1916), a drawing by Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele, to heirs of it’s unique proprietor. The museum has secured a temporary stay whereas it pursues an attraction.
The ruling, issued by Justice Althea Drysdale in April, follows a broader push by the Manhattan District Legal professional’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 stated, including that earlier courts had discovered the museum’s provenance proof credible. A federal court docket dismissed a separate civil swimsuit over the drawing in March, citing statute of limitations points.
Grünbaum’s heirs argue the Schiele works had been bought illegally after his detainment and by no means recovered by the household. They dispute the legality of a 1956 sale to Swiss vendor Eberhard Kornfeld, alleging it was facilitated by paperwork that sellers cast. Kornfeld bought 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 choice discovered New York authorities offered credible evident the sale wasn’t professional.
The Grünbaum heirs have already recovered a lot of Schiele works from different main U.S. establishments together with MoMA, the Morgan Library, and the Carnegie Museums.
