A painting by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, titled Insel im Attersee, is expected to sell for around $45 million at Sotheby’s auction in New York. The artwork was painted by Klimt in the Salzkammergut region of Austria and depicts the lake Attersee, which he often visited with friends during summers. Klimt’s use of colors, light, and texture to create a kaleidoscopic effect on the water’s surface represents the artist’s “Golden Period” when he produced some of his most well-known works.
Kallir and his contribution to art world
The painting was once owned by art collector Otto Kallir, who helped introduce Austrian modernists, including Klimt, to the United States after World War II. Kallir escaped from Austria to the United States in 1938 when the Nazis invaded his country. In New York, he founded Galerie St. Etienne, where he exhibited Klimt’s first solo show in 1959. Insel im Attersee was also among Klimt’s first paintings displayed at the gallery in 1940. Kallir helped place Klimt’s work in major American institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Fogg Museum at Harvard University.
Jane Kallir, Otto’s granddaughter, now runs the gallery’s archives through the nonprofit Kallir Research Institute. In 2002, Jane withdrew Insel im Attersee from an exhibition at the Oesterreichische Galerie Belvedere in Vienna after the museum refused to lend other Klimt paintings to a museum in Massachusetts over concerns that US authorities could seize them. At the time, a court in Los Angeles had agreed to consider arguments for the restitution of Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, which had been stolen by Nazis and was now part of the Vienna museum’s collection. The court later ordered the painting returned to the portrait’s sitter’s heirs.
Valuable artwork
Insel im Attersee is one of the most valuable works to be auctioned in New York. Other valuable pieces include two paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat, which are expected to sell for $45 million at Christie’s and $30 million at Sotheby’s, respectively. Additionally, Ed Ruscha’s Burning Standard is estimated to fetch between $20 million and $30 million at Christie’s, and Portrait of a Man as the God Mars by Peter Paul Rubens could sell for as much as $30 million at Sotheby’s. Klimt’s artwork has become increasingly popular among collectors and art enthusiasts in recent years. Last year, Birch Forest, another painting by Klimt, sold for $104.5 million during the sale of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s art collection at Christie’s New York.
