Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I

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Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I

Gustav Klimt, 1907

Oil, silver, and gold on canvas

138 × 138 cm, 54 × 54 in

Neue Galerie

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I is a painting by Gustav Klimt completed in 1907. According to press reports it was sold for US$135 million to Ronald Lauder for his Neue Galerie in New York City in June 2006, which made it at that time the most expensive painting ever sold.^[1] It has been on display at the gallery since July 2006.

Contents 1 The painting 2 Ownership of the painting 3 Film 4 See also 5 External links 6 References

[edit] The painting

Klimt took three years to complete the painting. It measures 138 x 138 cm and is made of oil and gold on canvas, showing elaborate and complex ornamentation as seen in the Jugendstil style. Klimt was a member of the Vienna Secession, a group of artists that broke away from the traditional way of painting. The picture was painted in Vienna and commissioned by Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer^[2]. As a wealthy industrialist who had made his fortune in the sugar industry, he sponsored the arts and favored and supported Gustav Klimt. Adele Bloch-Bauer became the only model who was painted twice by Klimt when he completed a second picture of her, Adele Bloch-Bauer II, in 1912.

[edit] Ownership of the painting

Adele Bloch-Bauer had indicated in her will that Klimt's paintings should be donated to the Austrian State Gallery.^[3] She died in 1925 from meningitis. When the Nazis took over Austria, her widowed husband had to flee to Switzerland. His property, including the Klimt paintings, was confiscated. In his 1945 testament, Bloch-Bauer designated his nephew and nieces, including Maria Altmann, as the inheritors of his estate.^[4]

As Bloch-Bauer's pictures had remained in Austria, the government took the position that the testament of Adele Bloch-Bauer had determined that these pictures were to stay there. After a protracted court battle in the United States and in Austria (see Republic of Austria v. Altmann), binding arbitration by the Austrian court established in 2006 that Maria Altmann was the rightful owner of this and four other paintings by Klimt.^[5] After the pictures were sent to America, they were on display in Los Angeles in 2006 before the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer was sold to Lauder.

The painting will be a centerpiece in Ronald Lauder’s collection for his Neue Galerie in New York. This collection has for years attempted to recover Jewish-owned art, mostly from Germany and Austria, that had been confiscated or looted by the Nazi government. Lauder worked towards this goal while he was the US ambassador to Austria, as a member of the “World Jewish Restitution Organization", and as a member of a Clinton commission to examine cases of Nazi looting. Lauder’s comment on the acquisition for his Neue Gallerie collection: “This is our Mona Lisa”.^[6]

In June 2006 New York's Neue Galerie is reported to have paid $135m for the fifth looted Klimt portrait, Adele Bloch-Bauer I. Adele Bloch-Bauer II sold for almost $88m in November 2006 at Christie's.

[edit] Film

Maria Altmann's remarkable story and justice against all odds was made into a documentary movie "Stealing Klimt", which was released 2007. The movie featured interviews with Maria Altmann herself, Count Hubertus Czernin, Tina Walzer, Randol Schoenberg and others who were closely involved with the story.

[edit] See also

• List of most expensive paintings

[edit] External links

• Stealing Klimt at the Internet Movie Database
• iKlimt.com, Life and Work of Gustav Klimt
• Fortune article by Tyler Green about Ronald Lauder and the Neue Galerie's acquisition of the painting.
• Documentation of the Legal Fight
• Slate article (06/2006)
• Los Angeles County Museum of Art: Klimt

[edit] References

• Hubertus Czernin. Die Fälschung: Der Fall Bloch-Bauer und das Werk Gustav Klimts. Czernin Verlag, Vienna 2006. ISBN 3-7076-0000-9
• The Fight for the Klimt Paintings