Gustav Klimt was an Austrian symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. Klimt is noted for his paintings, murals, sketches, and other objets d'art. Klimt's primary subject was the female body, and his works are marked by a frank eroticism. Amongst his figurative works, which include allegories and portraits, he painted landscapes. Among the artists of the Vienna Secession, Klimt was the most influenced by Japanese art and its methods.
Art theft, sometimes called artnapping, is the stealing of paintings, sculptures, or other forms of visual art from galleries, museums or other public and private locations. Stolen art is often resold or used by criminals as collateral to secure loans. Only a small percentage of stolen art is recovered—an estimated 10%. Many nations operate police squads to investigate art theft and illegal trade in stolen art and antiquities.
The Belvedere is a historic building complex in Vienna, Austria, consisting of two Baroque palaces, the Orangery, and the Palace Stables. The buildings are set in a Baroque park landscape in the third district of the city, on the south-eastern edge of its centre. It houses the Belvedere museum. The grounds are set on a gentle gradient and include decorative tiered fountains and cascades, Baroque sculptures, and majestic wrought iron gates. The Baroque palace complex was built as a summer residence for Prince Eugene of Savoy.
Republic of Austria v. Altmann, 541 U.S. 677 (2004), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, or FSIA, applies retroactively. It is one of the most recent cases that deals with the "anti-retroactivity doctrine", which is a doctrine that holds that courts should not construe a statute to apply retroactively unless there is a clear statutory intent that it should do so. This means that, regarding lawsuits filed after its enactment, the FSIA standards of sovereign immunity and its exceptions apply even to conduct that took place before 1976. Since the FSIA is only a codification of existing well settled international law, Austria was deemed not immune from litigation.
The Neue Galerie New York is a museum of early twentieth-century German and Austrian art and design located in the William Starr Miller House at 86th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City. Established in 2001, it is one of the most recent additions to New York City's famed Museum Mile, which runs from 83rd to 105th streets on Fifth Avenue in the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
The Österreichische Galerie Belvedere is a museum housed in the Belvedere palace, in Vienna, Austria.
Maria Altmann was an Austrian-American Jewish refugee from Austria, who fled her home country after it was annexed to the Third Reich. She is noted for her ultimately successful legal campaign to reclaim from the Government of Austria five family-owned paintings by the artist Gustav Klimt which were stolen by the Nazis during World War II.
Hubertus Czernin was an Austrian investigative journalist.
Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I is a painting by Gustav Klimt, completed between 1903 and 1907. The portrait was commissioned by the sitter's husband, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a Jewish banker and sugar producer. The painting was stolen by the Nazis in 1941 and displayed at the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere. The portrait is the final and most fully representative work of Klimt's golden phase. It was the first of two depictions of Adele by Klimt—the second was completed in 1912; these were two of several works by the artist that the family owned.
Adele Bloch-Bauer was a Jewish Viennese socialite, salon hostess, and patron of the arts from Austria-Hungary. She is most well known for being the subject of two of artist Gustav Klimt's paintings: Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I and Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II. She has been called "the Austrian Mona Lisa."
Eric Randol Schoenberg is an American lawyer and genealogist, based in Los Angeles, California, specializing in legal cases related to the recovery of looted or stolen artworks, particularly those by the Nazi regime during the Holocaust.
Judith Helen Dobrzynski is an American journalist and instructor in journalism. She is currently a freelance writer who has contributed articles on culture, the arts, business, philanthropy and other topics to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and several magazines.
Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II is a 1912 painting by Gustav Klimt. The work is a portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. Bloch-Bauer (1881–1925) was a Vienna socialite, who was a patron and close friend of Klimt.
The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War is a 1994 book by Lynn H. Nicholas and a 2006 documentary film. The book explores the Nazi plunder of looted art treasures from occupied countries and the consequences. It covers a range of associated activities: Nazi appropriation and storage, patriotic concealment and smuggling during World War II, discoveries by the Allies, and the extraordinary tasks of preserving, tracking, and returning by the American Monuments officers and their colleagues. Nicholas was awarded the Légion d'Honneur by France.
Jonathan Petropoulos is an American historian who writes about National Socialism and, in particular, the fate of art looted during World War II. He is John V. Croul Professor of European History at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California. Before his 1999 appointment to Claremont McKenna College, Petropoulos taught at Loyola College in Maryland.
George (Georges) Minne was a Belgian artist and sculptor famous for his idealized depictions of man's inner spiritual conflicts, including the "Kneeling Youth" sculpture series. A contemporary of Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, Minne's work shows many similarities in both form and subject matter to the Viennese Secessionists, the fathers of Art Nouveau.
Woman in Gold is a 2015 biographical drama film directed by Simon Curtis and written by Alexi Kaye Campbell. The film stars Helen Mirren, Ryan Reynolds, Daniel Brühl, Katie Holmes, Tatiana Maslany, Max Irons, Charles Dance, Elizabeth McGovern, and Jonathan Pryce.
Bernhard Altmann (1888–1960) was an Austrian textile manufacturer whose business was Aryanized and whose family's art collection was looted by Nazis because of their Jewish origins. He introduced cashmere wool to North America on a mass scale in 1947.
Anne-Marie O'Connor is an American journalist and writer who authored The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer, the bestselling story of the battle by Vienna emigre Maria Altmann to reclaim five Gustav Klimt paintings from her native Austria in an eight-year legal battle by Los Angeles attorney E. Randol Schoenberg; a saga that also inspired a Harvey Weinstein movie, Woman in Gold, in which Helen Mirren played Maria Altmann. One of the paintings, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I sold for a record $135 million in 2006, to Ronald Lauder's Neue Galerie New York, where the painting is on view.
The Accidental Caregiver: How I Met, Loved, and Lost Legendary Holocaust Refugee Maria Altmann is a 2012 memoir by Gregor Collins, recounting the three years he was a caregiver for Maria Altmann, as well as a stageplay, which premiered at the Robert Moss Theater in New York City on January 26, 2015.
