Manhattan DA: Allen Memorial Art Museum in Oberlin had artwork stolen by Nazis during Holocaust

NEW YORK — Three artworks believed stolen during the Holocaust from a Jewish art collector and entertainer have been seized by New York law enforcement authorities from museums in three states — including the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College. The artworks by Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele were all previously owned by Fritz Grünbaum, a cabaret performer and songwriter who died at the Dachau concentration camp in 1941. The works were seized Wednesday from the Allen museum, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, the Associated Press reported Thursday. The three pieces seized include "Girl With Black Hair," a 1911 watercolor and pencil on paper valued at $1.5 million and seized from Oberlin; "Russian War Prisoner," a watercolor and pencil on paper piece valued at $1.25 million, seized from the Art Institute; and "Portrait of a Man," a pencil on paper drawing valued at $1 million and seized from the Carnegie Museum of Art Warrants issued by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office said there's reasonable cause to believe the three artworks are stolen property. Prosecutors believe they have jurisdiction in all of the cases because the artworks were bought and sold by Manhattan art dealers at some point, the AP reported. Douglas Cohen, a spokesperson for the district attorney, told the AP he could not comment on the artworks seized except to say that they are part of an ongoing investigation. "We are confident that Oberlin College legally acquired Egon Schiele's 'Girl with Black Hair' in 1958, and that we lawfully possess it. We are cooperating with the Manhattan District Attorney's criminal investigation," Oberlin College spokeswoman Andrea Simakis wrote in an email to The Chronicle-Telegram on Thursday. "We believe that Oberlin is not the target of the Manhattan DA's criminal investigation into this matter. Per the search warrant, the artwork has officially been seized, and Oberlin is holding it on behalf of the New York court that issued the warrant." The drawing has been exhibited throughout the United States and in Europe more than a dozen times since 1956, according to a list of exhibits on the Allen Museum's website. The last 10 times were at the museum itself, between 1986 and 2014. The history The three works and several others from the collection, which Grünbaum began assembling in the 1920s, are the subject of civil litigation on behalf of his heirs. They believe the entertainer was forced to cede ownership of his artworks under duress. The son of a Jewish art dealer in what was then Moravia, Grünbaum studied law but began performing in cabarets in Vienna in 1906. A well-known performer in Vienna and Berlin by the time Adolf Hitler rose to power, Grünbaum challenged the Nazi authorities in his work. He once quipped from a darkened stage, "I can't see a thing, not a single thing; I must have stumbled into National Socialist culture." Grünbaum was arrested and sent to Dachau in 1938. He gave his final performance for fellow inmates on New Year's Eve 1940 while gravely ill, then died on Jan. 14, 1941. The Art Institute said in a statement Thursday, "We are confident in our legal acquisition and lawful possession of this work. The piece is the subject of civil litigation in federal court, where this dispute is being properly litigated and where we are also defending our legal ownership." The Carnegie Museum said it was committed to "acting in accordance with ethical, legal, and professional requirements and norms" and would cooperate with the authorities. Before the warrants were issued Wednesday, the Grünbaum heirs had filed civil claims against the three museums and several other defendants seeking the return of artworks that they say were looted from Grünbaum. They won a victory in 2018 when a New York judge ruled that two works by Schiele had to be turned over to Grünbaum's heirs under the Holocaust Expropriated Recovery Act, passed by Congress in 2016. The work The Allen Art Museum's website lists "Girl with Black Hair," in watercolor and graphite pencil on paper, as "not on view" at the museum. Created in 1911, the drawing is 17 11/16 by 12 7/16 inches. "This arresting drawing by Austrian artist Egon Schiele is related to a lost oil painting of the same model, there fully clothed, executed in the same year. While it likely functioned as a preparatory work for that painting, the drawing is finished in its own right, rather than serving merely as a sketch. It is also closely related to at least four other drawings of the same year that depict the same model," according to the page dedicated to "Girl with Black Hair" on the Allen Memorial Art Museum's website. "Unlike many of his other drawings of nudes, Schiele here pays great attention to the girl's face. Her heavy-lidded, dark-smudged eyes with their distant gaze and the sharply angular contours of her nose and chin give her an air of intense tiredness, belying the red of her rosebud lips and cheek," the museum's description reads. "The extremely spare rendering of the sitter's midsection and breasts contrasts with the heavy, dark watercolor masses of her hair and skirt. Her bare knees slightly protrude below the edge of her skirt, as she sits back, legs behind her and to the side, and add yet another note of vulnerability." "With such works by Schiele and Klimt, as well as Pechstein, Kokoschka, Schmidt-Rottluff, Jawlensky, Klee, and Kollwitz, the AMAM has a small but important collection of Expressionist art," according to the Allen Museum's website. The artist Schiele was living in his mother's birthplace of Krumau — now known as Český Krumlov in South Bohemia, the Czech Republic — in 1911 but he was evicted for posing his underage girlfriend nude outdoors. "By that time, however, the 21-year-old artist was already well respected by his compatriots, including Gustav Klimt," who was Schiele's mentor, according to the Allen Museum's website. Much of Schiele's work included self-portraits, nudes and landscapes. The sexual nature of some of his work even landed him in jail in the 1910s after he was convicted of displaying pornographic images in a place where minors may see them, according to a profile of Schiele on the website Art in Context. "Schiele, unable to afford professional models, often depicted very young, working-class girls or prostitutes in unashamedly sexual poses," according to The Museum of Modern Art in New York City. "The awkwardly contorted body language that he favored conveys an uncomfortably suppressed emotion. In drawing, unlike painting, Schiele typically treated his subjects in a sexually explicit way. Drawings such as this were in much demand from Schiele's Viennese patrons." Schiele died at 28 in the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, according to MoMA and multiple online sources. His mentor and contemporary, Klimt's "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I" also was looted by Nazis in 1941 but finally returned to its rightful owners after a years-long international legal battle ended in 2006 and is on public display in New York City. That story was told in the 2015 film "Woman in Gold" starring Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds. The Associated Press and Chronicle-Telegram reporter Dave O'Brien contributed to this story.