Klimt landscape fetches $40m – ABC News Australian Broadcasting Corporation

A landscape by painter Gustav Klimt that was stolen by the Nazis then returned this year to the family of the Jewish owner has sold for a huge $US40.4 million at Sotheby’s in New York.

The painting, Litzlberg am Attersee Litzlberg on the Attersee, easily topped its pre-sale high estimate of $US25 million at the impressionist and modern sale.

Depicting a pastoral scene of towering, wooded hills rising from water into a bright sky, the landscape was stolen after the German annexation of Austria in 1938.

It was only returned this year to Georges Jorisch, grandson of the woman who owned it until the Nazis came.

Sotheby’s autumn sale saw stronger results than rival Christies, which had a poor night on Tuesday, with several of the main works, including a Degas bronze sculpture, failing to find buyers.

via Klimt landscape fetches $40m – ABC News Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Strange Random Art Quote:

Listen carefully to first criticisms made of your work. Note just what it is about your work that critics don’t like – then cultivate it. That’s the only part of your work that’s individual and worth keeping. – Jean Cocteau

 

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