Egon Schilee Watercolor, which is said to be surrounded by Nazism, is appointed to the auction

Water colors are scheduled to be sold by EGON Schilee, “The boy in a sailor suit”, next month In London In Christie’s after the auction house, it was brokered in a settlement between the sender and the heirs of the cabari Vienie, who had the work before killing him in the Nazi detention camp.

The 1914 image, which is valued at 1.3 million dollars, is one of about 80 works by the Austrian expressive artist owned by the cabaret, Fritz Gronbum. Grünbauum, an explicit critic of the Nazis, was arrested by Gestapo in 1938 and imprisoned in two detention camps, including Dachau, where he died in 1941.

After decades of working to track and restore his group, his heirs, Timothy Reef and David Fernacke, have reached settlements on a number of Shell’s works on paper in recent years. Christie sold 12 recovers.

The heirs, with the support of investigators from the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Manhattan, said that the wife of Gronbum, Elizabeth, had to hand over the art group to Nazi officials. Elizabeth was deported to the detention camp in 1942 and was killed.

But the Chicago Arts Institute, which owns the water colors that were owned by Grünbauum, indicated evidence that it says that the conflicts that the group had taken by the Nazis and went to the court to fight the seizure of work, called the “Russian War prisoner,” by investigators . The institute argues that the work was not looted, but he remained in the Gronbum family until it was sold to the art merchant Iberhard Cornefeld by Greenbum’s sister, Matilde Lukax, in 1956.

The New York Supreme Court judge, who was held several days of listening sessions on the dispute last fall, is scheduled to issue a ruling in the case in the coming weeks.

In its materials associated with the sale of watercolors, Christie’s, which has a section of the origin looking for restoration issues, adopted the position occupied by the heirs, who seek to restore hundreds of works that were once by Grünbauum.

“Beyond Elza Austria has confiscated the Fritz Gronpom group by Austria after Elza,” Richard Aroonitz, head of the Recovery Department at the auction House, said in a statement.

The efforts made to settle the source and ownership of GRünbauum’s business to multiple cases of the court.

In 2018, the New York Supreme Court ruled that Grünbaum was never sold or voluntarily abandoned any works before his death and that the heirs were the legal owners of Shil’s drawings in a group of art dealer Richard Nagy. In 2019, this ruling was supported by the New York Appeals Court.

Manhattan investigators were martyred in those rulings in seizing a number of Shell’s works in American museums and private groups. In 2023 and 2024, for example, five museums regained works to the heirs, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Carnegie Arts Museum.

But in two other cases – one of which includes directly the “Russian War prisoner” of the arts – the federal courts have ruled procedural reasons that the heirs of Gronbum had applied it too late to receive the claim. One of the federal judges also described the Cornevild’s account that he bought Lukak’s work as credible.

Separately, he fights a museum in Vienna – Albertina and the Leopold Museum – heirs demands regarding Shell in their groups on the basis that the sovereign immunity of Austria protects them from American lawsuits.

“Boy in a sailor suit” is a German woman who bought water colors in Sotheby’s in 1992, according to Dirk Paul, the administrative director of Ritte in Germany.

Michelle Maamaman, who runs the sale of Christie’s evening for the twentieth and 21st century art in March, which will be shown on the shell, described as “one of the best watercolors that she dealt with” and said that she shows the artist – who is the Nazi art that is considered “decline” – “in The height of his strength. ” She said that incomplete elements, such as the lost left hand, “excite movement and spontaneity.”

The sender, who was briefed on the Grünbau source, requested to help Christie to mediate an agreement with the heirs of Grünbauum, according to Boll. He said that she intends to donate her returns from selling to a kindergarten in Munich. The sale will also collect funds for the Grünbau Fischer Foundation ‘Fischer Foundation for the artists, according to Cristte.

“This is another moment to celebrate the memory of a member of our family, who was a brave artist, an artistic mosque and a fascist opponent,” Reef said in a press statement.