A GUSTAV KLIMT painting thought to have been lost for almost a century will be put on the auction block in Vienna, months after another work by the avant-garde artist set a record in London.
The assessed value of Portrait of Fräulein Lieser is €30 million to €50 million ($32.7 million to $54.5 million), according to the Kinsky auction house, which will accept bids on April 24 in the Austrian capital.
The sale follows the record $108 million paid for Klimt’s Lady with a Fan by Sotheby’s in June, the most valuable artwork to sell at auction in Europe.
“It’s incredibly well preserved, in almost unblemished original condition,” said Claudia Mörth-Gasser, head of the modern art department at Kinsky, who verified the work and presented it Thursday at a press conference in Vienna. “It’s been well handled for more than a century.”
The painting was last seen in 1925 at an exhibit in Vienna, before disappearing. The current owners — whom Kinsky declined to identify — have legally possessed the work since the 1960s, according to Kinsky’s Ernst Ploil, who investigated the ownership and provenance of the work.
While there’s a “hole in the ownership record,” the painting isn’t claimed in any of the restitution lists filed by families who suffered property expropriation under the Nazis, Mr. Ploil said. “There’s been no attempt to find or exert ownership over the painting,” he added.
Potential bidders will be able to view the painting over the next several months in Germany, Hong Kong, Switzerland and the UK. One of the final works created by Klimt before his death in 1918, no Central European painting of “even approximate importance” has been available for decades, according to the auction house. — Bloomberg