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Saturday, 16 July 2011 04:05

Klimt Landscape Once Looted by Nazis Could Go for $25 Million at Sotheby’s

"Litzlberg am Attersee" (1915) by Gustav Klimt. "Litzlberg am Attersee" (1915) by Gustav Klimt. Source: Sotheby's via Bloomberg

A Gustav Klimt landscape whose provenance includes Nazi looting and murder, and finally restitution to an heir of the original owner, could fetch more than $25 million at auction this fall.

The 1915 oil-on-canvas “Litzlberg am Attersee” (Litzlberg on the Attersee) will highlight Sotheby’s (BID) evening Impressionist and modern art sale in New York on Nov. 2.

“It’s a beautiful, beautiful painting,” said Jane Kallir, director of Galerie St. Etienne in Manhattan, which gave Klimt his first U.S. exhibition in 1959. The estimate is “a conservative, very prudent starting point. I would not be surprised if it does considerably better.”

Earlier this month, the Museum of Modern Art in Salzburg, Austria, returned the artwork to Georges Jorisch, the grandson of Amalie Redlich, a Jewish woman who owned it until she was deported to Poland by the Nazis in 1941 and murdered. Her art collection was seized by the Gestapo and sold off.

In 1944, the Klimt appeared in the collection of the Landesgalerie Salzburg, now known as the Residenzgalerie, and later in the Salzburg Museum of Modern Art.

The painting initially belonged to Austrian iron magnate Viktor Zuckerkandl and his wife, Paula, who were art patrons. In 1927, part of their collection passed to Viktor’s family. “Litzlberg am Attersee” landed with Viktor’s sister, Jorisch’s grandmother.

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