Adele is leaving Los Angeles for New York! The Gustav Klimt paintings that are currently on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art are leaving soon. The most famous painting of Adele Bloch-Bauer will be on view through this Friday, June 30th. Larry and I went to see the five Klimt paintings last night. If you've been following the story of the paintings in the newspaper, you know that this is a once-in-a-lifetime show. Here's an excerpt from the LACMA site:
"When Germany annexed Austria in March 1938, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a Jew, fled Austria without the Klimt paintings. The new Nazi government saddled him with a punitive tax bill and engaged a Nazi trustee, Dr. Erich Führer, to sell his property. Three of the Klimt paintings went to the Austrian Gallery, and the others were sold elsewhere. After the war such transactions were deemed void, and the artworks were subject to restitution proceedings.
Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer spent most of the war in Switzerland and died in November 1945. When writing his last will he knew that many Austrians had supported Hitler and did not want the Klimt paintings to go to the Austrian Gallery. He therefore left his property to his niece, Maria Altmann, and two of her siblings.
Maria Altmann and the other heirs emigrated to North America. While they managed to export many works from the Bloch-Bauer collection, the Klimt paintings remained in Vienna. Austrian authorities ruled that the paintings belonged to the Austrian Gallery, basing their decision on Adele Bloch-Bauer’s 1923 will. Until the late 1990s the Bloch-Bauer heirs believed that there was little that they could do to recover the lost patrimony. In 1998 Austria passed a law that opened archives and facilitated restitution claims, and Maria Altmann learned more about the fate of the Bloch-Bauer Klimts. She engaged an attorney, E. Randol Schoenberg (himself from a prominent Viennese Jewish family), to recover the paintings. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in June 2004 that the heirs could sue the state of Austria in a U.S. court. Not wanting a lengthy legal process with appeals, Schoenberg, representing the 89-year-old Maria Altmann, entered into legally binding arbitration with the Austrian authorities.
In January 2006 an Austrian panel issued its verdict: of the six paintings in question, five belonged to the heirs. A decision about the remaining painting would come at a later date. Maria Altmann and the heirs could reclaim a part of their family’s history. Just as life has taken her from Vienna to Los Angeles, so too have the paintings followed this path."
The Klimt paintings have been on view at the Museum since April 4th. This is the first chance I've had to see them. The portraits of Maria Altmann's Aunt Adele are magnificent. The accompanying landscapes are lovely. I'm so glad that we made the effort to see this exhibit. The most famous gold painting of Adele was recently purchased by the heirs of cosmetics icon Estee Lauder. It will reside in the Neue Galerie, a small museum in New York City. Lauder's son, Ron paid $135 million for the painting.
