DW: Artworks Looted by Nazis Contribute to Record-Breaking Auction

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Artworks Looted by Nazis Contribute to Record-Breaking Auction

It was a night of record-breaking prices, restituted Nazi-looted artworks and controversial removals at auction house Christie's fall sale of Impressionist and modern art in New York on Wednesday night.

Generating a total of $491.5 million (383.5 million euros), the auction was dominated by four Nazi-looted works by Gustav Klimt restored to their rightful heirs that raked in nearly $200 million, and one restituted Ernst Ludwig Kirchner which sold for almost double the asking price.

Maria Altmann, the niece of the Austrian couple Adele and Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer who lost the Klimts to the Nazis in World War II, raised a total of $192.7 million from the sale of the four paintings, a staggering sum she will share with her children and grandchildren.

The four Klimt paintings, led by the portrait "Adele Bloch-Bauer II" which itself set a record as the third-highest auction sale ever at $88 million, were sold at almost twice as much as had been offered for them on the open market.

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2231569,00.html