Campaign "Do not sell, restitute!"

With a political campaign, the Jewish Community Vienna (IKG) called attention on June 22, 2011 in front of the Leopold Museum to the private foundation of the same name and its predicament of looted art.

Today at 7pm in London, Sotheby's is auctioning off one of the main Schiele-paintings of the private Leopold Foundation’s collection, namely “Houses with Colourful Laundry”. Another important painting of this collection, “Houses by the Sea”, is looted art and, thus, requires restitution. However, this will not happen.

The IKG is simultaneously organising a campaign in London and Vienna to call attention to the differing fate of these two paintings.

 

Campaign "Do not sell, restitute!" - London

"Houses with Laundry" And "Houses by the Sea"

 

The Leopold Museum Vienna is manoeuvring for two paintings by Egon Schiele that revolve around the same theme: houses. Despite the same theme, the fates of the two paintings could hardly be more different.

For many years "Houses by the Sea" has been stored in the Leopold Museum and, as the "Michalek Commission" found in June 2010, it is an outright work of looted art. For more than ten years, the heirs to Jenny Steiner, until 1938 the owner of "Houses by the Sea", have been fighting for restitution of the painting. The Leopold Museum is refusing to restitute it on arguments old an new: claiming that private foundations are exempt from the scope of the Austrian Art Restitution Act, that "Houses by the Sea" is an iconographic work by Egon Schiele and an "indispensable part" of the Collection.

By contrast, "Houses with Laundry" is being sold by the Leopold Museum via auction at Sotheby's. The painting is also an iconographic work by Egon Schiele – however, as it appears, a "dispensable part" of the Collection, for that matter – with selling and taking it out of Austria being no problem. Ironically enough, as the Leopold Museum announced, the proceeds of the auction will partly be used to pay the restitution settlement of Egon Schiele's "Wally", which has been a bone of contention for over ten years. So this does leave a bitter aftertaste.