What makes the Portrait of Wally case so significant?
It was the initiative taken by the US
By Judith H. Dobrzynski. Web only
Published online: 24 April 2012
If true art aims to change the world, perhaps no picture
has proven as successful lately as Egon Schiele’s 1912 tender, traditional
portrait of his mistress, Wally Neuzil. Far less graphic and edgy than the
works that made Schiele’s reputation, the painting is nevertheless destined for
iconhood because of its history as Nazi loot and the 13-year legal battle waged
for it, which was finally resolved in a 2010 settlement between the estate of
Lea Bondi Jaray, the US government and the Leopold Museum in Vienna. Now the
subject of a documentary called “Portrait of Wally,” which is due to premiere
at the Tribeca Film Festival in New
York
There have been plenty of restitution claims, before and
after, involving better works and more money. But early on in “Portrait of
Wally”, Willi Korte, an independent researcher who co-founded the Holocaust Art
Restitution Project, rightly says, “I can’t think of any other case that had
this effect, this significance. It is the case, out of all art restitution
cases that I can think of, that really shaped the discussion for the following
years.”
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