Klimt Landscape Achieves $40.4 Million at Sotheby's New York
After a prolonged competition between two determined bidders, Gustav Klimt’s Litzlberg am Attersee (Litzlberg on the Attersee) achieved an impressive $40,402,500 tonight in Sotheby’s Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale in New York (est. in excess of $25 million).
Litzlberg am Attersee follows the sale of Klimt’s landscape Kirche in Cassone (Landschaft mit Zypressen) (Church in Cassone – Landscape with Cypresses), which set an auction record for a landscape by the artist when it achieved £26.9 million ($43.2 million) at Sotheby’s London in February 2010 (est. $19/28.5 million).
Both landscapes – originally in the famed collection of Austrian iron magnate Viktor Zuckerkandl and his wife Paula, and descended to Viktor’s sister Amalie Redlich – were stolen after the annexation of Austria in 1938. Both have since been restituted to Georges Jorisch, great-nephew of Viktor and grandson of Amalie, after intensive research revealed that his memory of the works hanging in the family’s home in Purkersdorf was correct. Litzlberg am Attersee was returned to Mr. Jorisch this spring from the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, and a portion of the proceeds from its sale will be donated to that museum for the building of a new extension to be named in Amalie Redlich’s honor.
Sotheby’s New York
Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale
2 November 2011
Property Restituted to the Heir of Amalie Redlich
Gustav Klimt
Litzlberg am Attersee
Est. in excess of $25 million
Sold for $40,402,500
