Lawyer suggests 220 million euros for Klimt paintings

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Vienna (dpa) - US Lawyer Randol Schoenberg representing the owner of five Gustav Klimt paintings, Maria Altmann, suggests they could be sold back to Austria for 270 million dollars (220 million euros), according to the magazine "News".

Schoenberg said a realistic price for the most valuable, "Adele Bloch-Bauer I", was 105 million dollars (85.6 million euros). "Adele Bloch-Bauer II" was worth up to 60 million dollars (48.9 million euros), and each of the three landscape paintings 35 million dollars (28.5 million euros).

The lawyer's interview, published on Wednesday, came after a recent decision by an arbitration panel that the paintings should go to 90-year-old Altmann, niece and heiress of the original Jewish owner who was stripped of his possessions and driven out of Austria by the Nazis.

At present, the paintings are in the Austria Gallery at the Belvedere Palace in Vienna, where they have mostly been since World War Two. For decades, Austria refused to consider handing them back, and in the 1990's referred the matter to the courts.

Finally, both sides agreed to abide with a decision by the panel, which in the end went in favour of Altmann.

In an interview in the Vienna city paper Falter, Altmann was asked on Wednesday whether the paintings would be transferred to a museum in her home city Los Angeles in the United States.

"It was agreed that I'm not allowed to talk about that. I want the pictures to stay in museums. But where isn't decided yet - whether in Austria or not, the future will show."

Observers point out that if "Adele Bloch-Bauer I" - the so-called "Golden Adele" - actually changed hands for 105 million dollars, it would be the world's most expensive painting of all time.

Since May 2004, Pablo Picasso's "Garcon a la Pipe", painted in 1905, has held the world record at 104.17 million dollars.

It is followed by Van Gogh's "Portrait of Doctor Gachet" (82.5 million dollars), Renoir's "Au Moulin de la Galette" (78.1 million dollars) and Rubens' "Massacre of the Innocents" (76.7 million dollars).