The Art Institute of Chicago is contesting a New York court order to restitute Russian War Prisoner (1916), a drawing by Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele, to heirs of it’s original owner. The museum has secured a temporary stay while it pursues an appeal.
The ruling, issued by Justice Althea Drysdale in April, follows a broader push by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office to return Nazi-looted artworks to relative of it’s original owner Fritz Grünbaum, a Jewish art collector who was interned in a Nazi concentration camp, where he died.
The Schiele drawing was seized in situ from the museum in September 2023 and remains off view.
“We are disappointed with the ruling,” a spokesperson for the museum said, adding that previous courts had found the museum’s provenance evidence credible. A federal court dismissed a separate civil suit over the drawing in March, citing statute of limitations issues.
Grünbaum’s heirs argue the Schiele works were sold illegally after his detainment and never recovered by the family. They dispute the legality of a 1956 sale to Swiss dealer Eberhard Kornfeld, alleging it was facilitated through documents that dealers forged. Kornfeld sold extensively to Otto Kallir, a central figure in sales of art by Schiele after the war, providing U.S. authorities with jurisdiction.
Drysdale’s April decision found New York authorities presented credible evident the sale wasn’t legitimate.
The Grünbaum heirs have already recovered a number of Schiele works from other major U.S. institutions including MoMA, the Morgan Library, and the Carnegie Museums.
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