Egon Schiele art appraisal
In 1910, Schiele completed a unique twin self-portrait titled Self Seer. After the artist’s death, the work was acquired by Fritz Grünbaum, a cabaret artist and prolific collector of Schiele in the 1920s. When Austria was annexed to the Third Reich in 1938, the Grünbaum property in Vienna was seized and any art works belonging to the estate were likely resold. Many of Schiele’s works in Grünbaum’s collection have since been recovered and are in legal dispute but Self Seer has yet to be found.
Between 2006 – 2015, the Lentos Kunstmuseum reported Paar (1909), Tote Stadt (1911) and Junger Mann (c. 1908) missing from their museum collection when the heirs of Olga Jäger sought to retrieve the works that were on long-term loan to the museum since 1951. The works have yet to be recovered.
In 2018, Woman in a Black Pinafore (1911) and Woman Hiding her Face (1912) by Schiele, previously in the possession of art dealer Richard Nagy, were returned to heirs of the Grünbaum family after the works were plundered from their estate in 1938 during the Nazi regime. The family had listed the works in the German Lost Art Foundation.
In 2015, they pursued legal action after seeing the works being listed for sale at the Salon Art + Design Show in New York.