Town on the Blue
River (Stadt am blauen Fluss - Krumau)(1910)
In 1998, the plight
of Fritz Grunbaum and his death in Dachau gained international headlines when
District Attorney Robert Morgenthau seized Dead City III from the Museum of
Modern Art in New York City. Dead City III, together with 80 other artworks by
Egon Schiele were in Grünbaum's apartment in Vienna when the Gestapo arrested
him on March 22, 1938 and deported him to Dachau, where he was murdered.
Although the MoMA was compelled to return Dead City III to Austria because its
exhibition at MoMA in New York was immunized from seizure by treaty, the
seizure garnered international headlines and led to the Washington Conference
on Holocaust-Era Assets in 1998 and to an international movement in favor of
returning Nazi-looted artwork to Holocaust victims and their survivors.Recent films such as George Clooney's Monuments Men and The Rape of Europa based on Allied efforts during World War II to recover artworks stolen by the Nazi regime have rekindled interest in recovering artworks belong to Jewish families.
Attorney Raymond J. Dowd of Dunnington, Bartholow & Miller LLP www.dunnington.com in New York City stated: "On behalf of the Grunbaum heirs, I thank the Estate of Ilona Gerstel and Christie's for their cooperation in resolving the Holocaust restitution claim to Stadt am Blauen Fluss (Krumau) by Egon Schiele. The Grunbaum heirs and I are very pleased to completely support the sale of this important work at the Impressionist and Modem Evening Sale on November 5, 2014 in New York. We also want to acknowledge and thank the late Ilona Gerstel for her generosity in designating several important Holocaust-related charities as beneficiaries of her Estate."
www.dunnington.com
Copyright law, fine art and navigating the courts. All practice, no theory.
Copyright Litigation Handbook (Thomson Reuters Westlaw 2012-2013) by Raymond J. Dowd
