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.
Walter Slezak was an Austrian-born film and stage actor active between 1922 and 1976. He mainly appeared in German films before migrating to the United States in 1930 and performing in numerous Hollywood productions.
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 to acts prior to its enactment in 1976.
Maria Altmann was an Austrian-American Jewish refugee from Austria, who fled her home country after it was annexed to the Nazi’s 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 that were stolen by the Nazis during World War II.
Hubertus Czernin was an Austrian investigative journalist.
Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I is an oil painting on canvas, with gold leaf, by Gustav Klimt, completed between 1903 and 1907. The portrait was commissioned by the sitter's husband, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, a Viennese and 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 Viennese socialite, salon hostess, and patron of the arts from Austria-Hungary, married to sugar industrialist Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer. A Jewish woman, 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, and the fate of the paintings during and after the Nazi Holocaust. 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.
Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II is a 1912 painting by Gustav Klimt. The work is a portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer (1881–1925), 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.
Raoul Aslan was an Austrian theater actor of Greek-Armenian ancestry.
The Austrian Cultural Forum New York (ACFNY) is one of Austria's two cultural representation offices in the United States; the other is in Washington, D.C. It is part of the worldwide network of Austrian Cultural Forums overseen by the Austrian Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs.
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.
Gregor Collins is an American author, speaker, producer and actor, most known for writing The Accidental Caregiver, a memoir about the three years he spent with Maria Altmann.
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 was an Austrian textile manufacturer whose business was stolen 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. This bestselling story is about the eight-year legal battle by Vienna emigre Maria Altmann, represented by Los Angeles attorney E. Randol Schoenberg, to reclaim five Gustav Klimt paintings from her native Austria. This 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, sold for a record $135 million in 2006 to Ronald Lauder's Neue Galerie New York, where the painting is on view.
Stealing Klimt is a 2007 documentary film about Maria Altmann's attempt to recover five Gustav Klimt paintings stolen from her family by the Nazis in 1938, from Austria.
Rochelle Slovin is an American stage actress, and founding director of Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, New York City, which she led for 30 years, from 1981 until 2011. A native New Yorker, Slovin was educated at Cornell University and the Columbia Business School. She began her career in the 1960s as a performer in New York’s avant-garde theater, appearing often at La Mama Experimental Theatre Club and other off-off-Broadway venues.
Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer was an Austrian banker and sugar business magnate who owned one of the most extensive art collections in Europe, most of which was looted by the Nazis during the Anschluss. Husband of salon hostess Adele Bloch-Bauer and uncle of Jewish refugee Maria Altmann, he commissioned Gustav Klimt to paint Adele Bloch-Bauer I and Adele Bloch-Bauer II, the former being the centerpiece of the 2015 movie Woman in Gold with Helen Mirren.
