Seven artworks — valued at around $1 million each — that were stolen by the Nazis from an Austrian-Jewish cabaret performer will be returned to his relatives after more than 70 years, Manhattan prosecutors announced Wednesday.
The pieces by famed Austrian painter Egon Schiele – including some that were displayed at the Museum of Modern Art – are set to be returned to the family of performer and writer Fritz Grünbaum, whose art collection comprised of more than 100 works was looted during the Holocaust.
“In the more than 70 years since those pieces were ripped away from the rightful owners, it passed literally around the globe,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said at a news conference.
“Now, they’re returning to where they belong — back to his family where they should have always been.”
Bragg’s office, working with the Department of Homeland Security Investigations, seized the seven Schiele paintings from various art institutions including MoMA, The Ronald Lauder College, The Morgan Library, The Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Vally Sabarsky Trust in Manhattan.
One of Grünbaum’s relatives, New York City-native Timothy Reif, 64, said the return of the works “defeats Hitler’s plan to erase this brave Jewish man’s name from the book of history.”
“By recovering these long-lost artworks, our law enforcement authorities have today achieves a measure of justice for the victims of murder and robbery,” Reif, a a judge on the US Court of International Trade, told reporters.
Grünbaum’s home was robbed by the Nazis when he was captured in 1938 following German dictator Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Austria.
Nazi forces looted everything from clothing to Grünbaum’s entire art collection – which included 80 Schiele drawings – before sending him to the Dachau Concentration Camp, where he was murdered in 1941.
Reif said Nazis “systematically murdered” most of Grünbaum’s family members, including his wife, Elisabeth, who was deported to a Minsk death camp in 1942.
The seven recovered paintings include Schiele’s “I Love Antithesis,” a inscribed self-portrait that he completed while imprisoned in 1912, valued at $2.75 million, according to the DA’s Office.
At least six of the returned works are set to go up for auction at Christie’s, according to ARTnews.
The looted art recovery is the latest from Bragg’s office which has gone after stolen artifacts, including a July bust that yielded $69 million worth of good from Shelby White, a prominent New York philanthropist and major Metropolitan Museum of Art trustee.
Schiele was an exceptional expressionist artist that invoked intensity in his watercolors. He died at 28 when he contracted Spanish flu.