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The portrait began with a commission by the husband of the artist's alleged lover, and underwent a Nazi theft, a legal feud and a deal brokered by Larry Gagosian for Winfrey that is likely the biggest private sale of a single artwork in 2016. Oprah Winfrey has a long list of accomplishments. Being the seller of one of the top 10 most expensive paintings in history is now one of them. The OWN network founder and multibillionaire reportedly sold Gustav Klimt’s “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II” (1912) for $150 million to an unidentified buyer in China, according to Bloomberg’s art...

For Captain Compassion. Quintessence Saxophone Quintet playing the Fudge Fugue in G minor. Roughly chronological for the Art History buffs. Gustav Klimt was an Austrian painter who did ceilings and walls of museums and theaters, as well as amazing portraits. There's an eroticism to his work that might not appeal to all, but his "golden phase" is breathtaking.

Sotheby’s will auction the last portrait by Gustav Klimt, the 1917 painting Dame mit Fächer (Lady with a Fan), with the expectation that it will sell for over £65 million ($80 million), a record estimate for a painting in the United Kingdom and Europe. The auction house is promoting the painting, which previously sold at Sotheby’s in New York in 1994 for $11.6 million with fees, as “the star of the summer auction season in London” as well as “one of the finest and most valuable works of art ever to be offered in Europe.” It will head to sale...

Gustav Klimt’s ‘Dame mit Fächer’ (‘Lady with a Fan’) has sold for a record-breaking £85.3m ($108.m, €99.2m) at Sotheby’s. The sale marked the highest price ever paid for an artwork at a European auction. Making its first appearance on the market in 29 years, the piece exceeded pre-sale expectations of £65m. The final bid was placed by Patti Wong, founder of Patti Wong & Associates, who was representing a Hong Kong collector. The previous record for an artwork sold in Europe was £65m for Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture ‘L’homme qui marche I’ (‘The Walking Man I’), sold at Sotheby’s London in...

Portrait of Fräulein Lieser', which the Austrian modernist artist started in 1917, sold to an unknown buyer at an auction in Vienna yesterday. The portrait of a young woman was one of Klimt's last works, as the artist died in early 1918 after suffering from a stroke, meaning the painting has small unfinished areas. The Jewish Lieser family, who had commissioned the painting, received the artwork unfinished, but soon after were forced to flee Austria amid the rise of Hitler and antisemitism.

Mystery still swirls around Klimt’s painting, which went missing for nearly 23 years after its theft from an Italian museum, only to turn up at the start of coronavirus pandemicMystery still swirls around Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of a Lady nearly a quarter-century after the painting was stolen from an Italian museum, only to turn up at the start of what would become the coronavirus pandemic. Who stole the 1917 artwork and how it wound up stashed inside the museum’s outer walls are still unknown. But the portrait of a young woman with a sensuous side glance will be part of...

The French government announced Monday that it will return a Nazi-looted Gustav Klimt landscape painting to its rightful owners more than 80 years after it was stolen from a Jewish family in Austria in 1938. The colorful 1905 oil work by the Austrian symbolist painter titled "Rosebushes under the Trees" has been hanging in Paris' Musée d'Orsay museum for decades. French Culture Minister Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin told a Paris news conference that "the decision to return a major work from the public collections illustrates our commitment to the duty of justice and reparation vis-à-vis plundered families." The oil work will be...

A dazzling gold-flecked 1907 portrait by Gustav Klimt has been purchased for the Neue Galerie in Manhattan by the cosmetics magnate Ronald S. Lauder for $135 million, the highest sum ever paid for a painting. The portrait, of Adele Bloch-Bauer, the wife of a Jewish sugar industrialist and the hostess of a prominent Vienna salon, is considered one of the artist's masterpieces. For years, it was the focus of a restitution battle between the Austrian government and a niece of Mrs. Bloch-Bauer who argued that it was seized along with four other Klimt paintings by the Nazis during World War...

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Austria's government said Thursday it cannot afford to buy back five Gustav Klimt paintings that a court has ordered returned to a California woman who says the Nazis stole them from her Jewish family. Elisabeth Gehrer, Austria's minister in charge of education and culture, said the government wanted to acquire the masterpieces but decided it could not afford the $300 million pricetag. Last month, an arbitration court awarded the paintings to Maria Altmann of Los Angeles, who says they were looted from her family by the Nazis. "Therefore the paintings are immediately available for her to...

Vienna - Five priceless Gustav Klimt paintings have been removed from exhibit after an anonymous threat to destroy them, the Austria Gallery in Vienna's Belvedere Palace said Friday. The threat had been in a mail to U.S. lawyer Randol Schoenberg, acting for the owner of the paintings Maria Altmann. The works by modern master Klimt (1862-1918) had been taken to safety in a storage depot, said the statement. 'The management of the Austrian Gallery Belvedere thereby follows an urgent recommendation of the General Director of Public Security in the Interior Ministry, and the insurance company of the Austrian Gallery.' Sources...