Austria has agreed to hand over five precious Gustav Klimt paintings to a Jewish woman in California who says that the Nazis stole them from her family.
Elizabeth Gehrer announced today that the Austrian Government will honour an arbitration court decision, made public yesterday, that the country has an obligation to give the paintings to Maria Altmann, a retired clothes shop owner from Beverley Hills.
Ms Altmann, 89, was one of the heirs of the family who owned the paintings before the Nazis took over Austria in 1938.
The works have been on public display for decades in Vienna’s ornate Belvedere castle. Austria’s decision to give up the paintings represents the costliest concession since it began returning valuable art objects looted by the Nazis.
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The paintings are estimated to be worth $150 million (£85 million). Klimt-lovers, however, consider that at least one of the disputed works, the gold-encrusted portrait entitled Adele Bloch-Bauer I, is too precious to be given a financial value.
Jane Kallir, co-director of New York City’s Galerie St Etienne, which introduced Klimt to the United States in 1959, calls the 1907 portrait “literally priceless”. Stylistically similar to Klimt’s world-renowned The Kiss, the painting is replicated on T-shirts, cups and other souvenirs.
Austria considers the paintings part of its national heritage. Klimt was a founder of the Vienna Secession art movement that for many became synonymous with Jugendstil, the German and central European version of Art Nouveau.
But Ms Altmann - the niece of Bloch-Bauer, whose family commissioned her famous portrait - says that the five Klimt paintings are part of her family’s inheritance.
After Bloch-Bauer died in 1925, the paintings remained in the family’s possession. Her husband fled to Switzerland after the Nazis took over Austria. The Nazis then took the paintings, and a gallery in the Belvedere was made the formal owner.
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E. Randol Schoenberg, Ms Altmann’s lawyer, said that it was too early to say exactly what would happen to the paintings in light of the court’s ruling. Ms Altmann has four siblings who are also heirs with claims to the artwork, he added.
Ms Altmann has suggested that she may be ready to compromise, telling ORF, the Austrian state broadcaster, that she wanted the famed portrait and a lesser-known one of her aunt to stay in Austria. She did not elaborate.
The case was made possible by a 1998 Austrian law that requires federal museums to review their holdings for any works seized by the Nazis, and to determine whether they were obtained without remuneration.
Lawyers for Austria argued that Ms Altmann’s aunt had intended to give the works to the Austrian Gallery.
The two sides began mediation in March, following a US Supreme Court decision that Ms Altmann could sue the Austrian government.