Gustav Klimt's "Portrait of Miss Liser," a painting of a young woman left unfinished when the Austrian artist died, sold at auction today for 30 million euros ($32 million), despite open questions about its subject and its previous ownership, according to Reuters.
As the BBC writes in Serbian, the "Portrait of Miss Lizer" once belonged to a Jewish family in Austria, and the picture was last seen in public in 1925.
The sudden reappearance of the artwork, along with an intriguing back story, has created quite a buzz around the image. Ahead of the sale this afternoon, around 15.000 visitors took the opportunity to see the work on display at the Viennese auction house, im Kinski.
The painting by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt was thought lost for a hundred years, the Guardian says, until Kinski announced at a press conference in January that the portrait had been rediscovered in a private collection. Until then, only a black and white photograph of the painting was known.
In fact, it seems, the painting, which was created in the spring of 1917, when Klimt was one of the most famous portrait painters in Europe, which was a year before his death, had been hanging in a private villa near Vienna for decades, according to Kinski, whose estimated the value at 30 to 50 million euros.
The subject of the painting is most likely a teenage girl, wearing a turquoise dress wrapped in a flowing floral robe, against a red background, with skin like alabaster and piercing, pale brown eyes, contrasting with her dark, curly hair.
Despite portraying her so clearly, it remains unclear who "Fraeulein Lieser" actually was. The brothers Adolf and Justus Lizer were wealthy industrialists in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, who built their wealth on jute and hemp, making twine and rope.
Henrietta Emelia Lizer Landova, nicknamed "Lilli", was married to Justus until their divorce in 1905 and became a well-known patron of the arts. It is possible that she commissioned a painting of one of her daughters, or perhaps Adolf Lizer did it for his daughter Margaret - some speculation.
Reuters reports that the auction house announced on its website that, according to the latest provenance research, Klimt's model was probably not Margareta Constance Lizer, but one of the two daughters of Lili Lizer (with Justus) - either Helene, the elder, born in 1898, or her sister Annie , who was three years younger.
A statement on the auctioneer's website reveals that whoever she was, she visited Klimt's studio nine times in April and May 1917. He made at least 25 preliminary studies and most likely began painting in May of that year, CNN reports. .
What happened to the painting after Klimt's death in 1918, when it was supposed to be in his studio, remains unclear, especially what happened after Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938 and the country's Jews were persecuted, dispossessed, sent to concentration camps.
Margareta left Austria for Hungary and then for Britain, but the auction house says that, verified, the painting never left Austria. Lili Lizer remained in Vienna until she was deported in 1942 and was then murdered in Auschwitz the following year.
Her daughters returned to Vienna after World War II to reclaim her property, but the painting was not mentioned in any documents, the auction house said.
"It is precisely these many ambiguities and historical gaps that have led the current owners to contact the legal heirs of the Lizer family and to agree with all of them on a 'fair and just solution' in 2023," they added, without identifying the current owners.
"It was agreed that the content of the aforementioned agreement will not be disclosed, but it can be said that all possible demands of all involved parties will be settled and fulfilled through the auction of the work of art," the announcement states.
"The agreement essentially means that, from a purely legal point of view, it is irrelevant who commissioned the painting from Gustav Klimt and which of the three young ladies in question it depicts."
Speaking about Klimt, art critic Richard Cork said that this artist is popular because, on the one hand, he was very avant-garde in his time, experimented with new things, and on the other hand, he dealt with themes that are very attractive, points out Bi- BBC.
"He has a very sensual appeal and people respond to that almost instinctively. He 'pushes' his paintings towards abstraction, and he does this by filling many of them with patterns and that pattern-making has that kind of appeal," he adds, adding that there is a sense of freedom in Klimt's work and the quality through which people recognize themselves.
As the son of a goldsmith, Klimt understood metals like few other artists of his generation. Although he worked with paint, he had a unique ability to create the illusion of precious metals, stones and gems.
Also his paintings were controversial, but they appealed to a new sensibility, a celebration of sexuality that was just emerging in the city and society that was the playground of another famous Austrian, Sigmund Freud. In 1905, Freud published "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality," a book that was meant to deeply challenge attitudes toward sex.
Like Freud, Klimt wanted to place sexuality in the public sphere.
"No one was able to synthesize feelings like love, passion or desire, but also despair and anxiety like Klimt," says Klaus Pokorny of the Leopold Museum in Vienna. "That's why it's so fascinating to young people".
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