Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Four of five works by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt and recovered after a long legal battle will soon go under the hammer, Christie's auction house announced Monday.
A fifth Klimt was sold at a record price when it was auctioned in June.
The art work originally belonged to a wealthy Jewish Austian industrialist, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer and his wife Adele. The Bloch-Bauer property was taken over by the Nazis in 1938, and the family heirs recently recovered the art work after a legal struggle with the Austrian government that began in 1998.
"Since recovering the paintings, my family and I have focused our efforts on arranging exhibitions in Los Angeles and New York in order to share these beautiful works and their powerful story," Maria Altman, 90, a niece of the Bloch-Bauers and one of the heirs, in a statement issued by Christie's.
"Our family has now made the decision to part with them," the statement added.
In June, Christie's auctioned Klimt's "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I" for 135 million dollars to New York cosmetics magnate Ronald Lauder, who donated it to New York's Neue Galerie, a gallery specializing in German and Austrian art of the period between 1890 and 1940.
That auction beat the previous record price set in 2004 of 104.1 million dollars for Pablo Picasso's 1905 "Boy with a Pipe."
Painted between 1903 and 1916, the four addition works up for auction range represent very different phases in the artist's career.
They include "Adele Bloch-Bauer II," painted in 1912; "Houses in Unterachon Lake Atter," from 1916; "Apple Tree I," from either 1911 or 1912; and "Birch Forest," painted in 1903 -- one from a series of wood paintings that critics regard as Klimt's closest connection to the Impressionist movement.
The five works are on public display at the Neue Galerie until September 18.
cho/zak/ch
AFPEntertainment-US-art-painting-Klimt
AFP 072014 GMT 08 06
COPYRIGHT 2006 Agence France-Presse. All rights reserved.
