The Stolen Painting Of Egon Schiele
Egon Leo Adolf Ludwig Schiele was an important Austrian painter of the early 20th century. He was the student of Gustav Klimt who was also a remarkable Austrian painter. Schiele was mostly known for the twisted body shapes that he used in his drawings and paintings, which made him one of the well-known expressionist painters. One of the paintings he made is ‘’Portrait Of Wally’’ which showcases his lover and model of his drawings. This painting is known to be one of the most famous paintings he has ever made. The reason, apart from the eye-catching colors and clean technique, is the history of the painting.
Portrait of Wally is an oil painting of Walburga (Wally) Neuzil and was painted in 1912. Even though there is not much information about Walburga Neuzil, it is a theory that she was also the model of Gustav Klimt. But this incredible painting has a deeper history that makes it one of the well-known pieces of art made by Schiele.
Egon Schiele died in 1918, before the start of World War II. Most of his artwork was in the hands of Jewish collectors or gallerists. During World War II, the Nazis were collecting important paintings. It is estimated that the Nazis moved a third of all artworks situated in Europe. After the war ended, allied forces found an enormous number of stolen pieces of art and tried to find the country they belonged to, in order to find their owners. The portrait of Wally was one of the many paintings the Nazis confiscated and was the subject of a legal battle between the museum in Vienna, who refused to give back the painting to the owner, and the people who tried to claim it. Lea Bondi, who was a Jewish art dealer in Vienna, was the real owner of the painting and she kept it in her apartment, apart from her gallery. Because the Jews did not have a right to own businesses, the gallery of Lea was sold to a Nazi art dealer. When the art dealer came to Lea’s house, he confiscated the portrait of Wally along with her gallery. Lea then left Vienna but never stopped thinking about the portrait of Wally and always tried to learn who owned it and where it was. She talked to Rudolf Leopold, a famous art collector, and told him that the portrait she owned was in the museum of Vienna. Rudolf then went on to Vienna but he got the portrait of Wally for his own private collection and did not give it to Lea. The portrait was then lent to The Museum of Modern Art in New York. The heirs of Lea Bondi wanted the painting to be lent back to them. The history of the painting started to change when Lea’s heirs demanded the painting and the legal battles started. After more than a decade of proceedings, in 2009, the United States District Court of New York came to the conclusion that there was enough evidence that the painting was originally owned by Lea Bondi. In 2010, the heirs of Bondi accepted 19 million dollars for the return of the painting to the Leopold Museum where it would be displayed along with a self-portrait of Egon Schiele. The interesting history of this portrait has been used for a documentary made in 2012 named ‘’Portrait of Wally’’ by Andrew Shea.
This precious artwork not only was one of the best paintings of Sciele but was also a subject to documentaries with its interesting history. The story also tells us a lot about the Nazis who were quite interested in art and confiscated almost a third of all artworks in Europe.
Work Cited:
https://www.lootedart.com/PE7S8H641131
https://www.forbes.com/2002/04/17/0417hot.html?sh=6bc21904e779
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portrait_of_Wally
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfRvsFVgWew
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-1010/early-abstraction/expressionism1/v/schiele-wally
https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/egon-schiele/m0df65?hl=en
