A Czech man claims he’s the rightful heir to paintings worth millions that once belonged to a Jewish cabaret performer who was killed by the Nazis — and wants auction house Christie’s to reveal what it knows about the art’s current location and owners.
Milos Vavra is an heir to Franz Friedrich “Fritz” Grünbaum‘s art collection, he said in a Manhattan Supreme Court filing asking a judge to force Christie’s to share the information.
Before he was killed in January 1941 at the Dachau Concentration Camp, the Nazis forced Grünbaum, 60, to sign a document giving his wife the authority to transfer his property.
The Nazis then stole his art collection, which included works by Austrian impressionist Egon Schiele, Vavra said in court papers.
Christie’s has previously sold six works by the Schiele from Grünbaum’s collection — most selling for $1 million apiece, according to court papers.
In July, the auction house told Vavra and another Grünbaum heir that a family in Switzerland reached out offering to “partner” with the heirs to sell three Schiele paintings, Vavra said in the filing.
“Experts at Christie’s have seen these three works and describe two of the works as being among the highest quality (and potentially most valuable) Scheile (sic) works they have seen,” according to a Christie’s email included in court papers.
Schiele’s art was not sold outside of Austria before the Nazis took over the country in 1938.
The works “have been considered to be ‘red flag’ artworks following World War II and very dangerous to collect or sell without ascertaining provenance,” Vavra said in the legal papers.
Vavra wants a judge to force the auction house to “immediately turn over” all information “relevant to possessors of artworks from the Grünbaum Collection (including all sales records, financial information, appraisals, expert reports, estimate and correspondence),” so he can bring a lawsuit seeking restitution.
Christie’s said it: “has established an unparalleled record of bringing objects with painful World-War-Two era histories to public sale by respecting the law, the ethics of restitution, and the principles put in place to support a successful outcome, as we are doing in this case.”
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