Klimt painting looted by Nazis sells for €29.4 million

A PAINTING looted by the Nazis in Vienna during the second World War sold at a Sotheby's auction in New York on Wednesday for $40.4 million (€29.4 million). Litzlberg am Attersee (Litzlberg on the Attersee), a view of the environs of Lake Attersee in western Austria, by the artist Gustav Klimt, had been hanging in a modern-art museum in Salzburg.

Research revealed that the Gestapo seized the painting from a Jewish woman, Amalie Redlich, after deporting her to Poland in October 1941. Redlich vanished and is presumed to have been murdered. Earlier this year the museum handed back the painting to her grandson, Georges Jorisch (82), who escaped from Vienna as a child and now lives in Canada.

Sotheby’s said the painting had been bought by the Swiss art dealer David Lachenmann on behalf of an anonymous private collector who acquired the work because it was “a masterpiece in perfect condition”.

Speaking after the auction, Jorisch said: “This was a beautiful evening and a very exciting moment.”

A portion of the proceeds from the sale will be donated to the Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, for the building of an extension to be named after Amalie Redlich.

The previous evening in Manhattan, a sculpture by Degas, expected to go for up to $35 million (€25.4 million), failed to sell at Christie's auction of impressionist and modern art. Bidding for the bronze of a young ballerina, La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans (The Little Dancer of 14 Years)stalled at $18.5 million (€13.4 million) and it failed to sell.

Other casualties included works by Picasso and Giacometti. Christie’s said the results were “patchy” and auction watchers blamed vendors for setting unattainably high reserve prices.

But the sale had some high points, and 51 of the 82 lots sold, for $140 million (€101.5 million) in total. The highest price was achieved for The Stolen Mirror, a Surrealist painting by the German artist Max Ernst, dated 1941. It went to a private European buyer for $16.3 million (€11.8 million), way above its estimate, establishing a new world auction record for the artist.