Aranka Munk (née Pulitzer, born November 28, 1862, died November 26, 1941) was a Viennese art collector murdered in the Holocaust.
Life
editBorn in Mako, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1862, into a Jewish family, Munk was the daughter of Simon Siegmund Pulitzer and Charlotte Pulitzer[1] and the sister of Klimt's chief patron Serena Lederer and Jenny Steiner. She had three daughters, Lili Munk; Ria Munk and Lola Christine Sachsel-Kraus.
The suicide of Ria Munk
editIn 1911, her daughter Ria committed suicide.[2] An art collector and patron of the arts, Munk asked Klimt to paint a death-bed portrait of her daughter. Klimt painted three versions which had different fates. The first portrait Klimt painted for Aranka Munk was "Ria Munk on Her Deathbed," which Munk found so usetting that she gave it to a sculptor friend, whose heirs sold it after the war, passing through the collection of the singer Barbra Streisand. The second version was later reworked to show a dancer, and the third, which Munk kept, was the unfinished "Portrait of Ria Munk III", also known Frauenbildnis, which ended up in the Lentos Museum's collection. Klimt died before completing it.[3][2]
Nazi era and death in the Holocaust
editAranka Munch was murdered in the Holocaust because of her Jewish heritage.[2] The Nazis seized the Klimt from Munk after she was deported to a concentration camp where she died in 1941. In 1942, her daughter Lola Munk died at the Chełmno Extermination Camp.[4]
Claim for restitution
editVienna lawyer Alfred Noll submitted a claim for restitution on behalf of the Munk heirs in 2007.[2]
The provenance of Portrait of Ria Munk III
editAfter Klimt's death Aranka Munk hung the unfinished portrait of her deceased daughter in her lake house. In 1941, the Nazis seized her property and possessions and deported her to a concentration camp in Poland. On November 26, 1941, Aranka died in the Holocaust.[5] The portrait passed through Wolfgang Gurlitt on its way to the Lentos Museum. In June 2009, the portrait was restituted to the heirs of Aranka Munk.[6][2]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ "Aranka Munk". geni_family_tree. 1862-11-28. Retrieved 2024-02-01.
- ^ a b c d e "Heirs of Nazi victim to sell restituted Klimt". Reuters.
- ^ "Gustav Klimt | paintings from 1910s art-Klimt.com | The Dancer, formerly Ria Munk 1916". 2017-01-16. Archived from the original on 2017-01-16. Retrieved 2024-01-27.
- ^ "Lola Christine Munk geb. 14 Sep 1900 Wien, Wien, Österreich gest. um 1942 Lódz (Ghetto Litzmannstadt), Lódz, Polen: JMH Genealogy". www.hohenemsgenealogie.at. Retrieved 2024-01-28.
- ^ McNearney, Allison (2018-04-08). "How Gustav Klimt's Unfinished 'Ria Munk III' Finally Escaped the Nazis". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 2024-01-27.
- ^ "Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) Frauenbildnis (Portrait of Ria Munk III)". Christies.
Provenance. Aranka Munk, Vienna and Bads Aussee, by whom acquired from the artist. Wolfgang Gurlitt, Berlin (see note). Neue Galerie der Stadt (later, Lentos Kunstmuseum), Linz (inv. no. 149), by whom acquired from the above by 1956. Restituted to the heirs of Aranka Munk in June 2009.