Serge Sabarsky

Serge Sabarsky (November 3, 1912 – February 23, 1996) was an art collector and art dealer of the 20th century.

Life

Born as Siegfried Sabarsky in Vienna, Sarbarsky worked as a clown and set designer for the cabaret Simplicissimus before fleeing the Nazis in 1938, first to Paris, then, in 1939 to New York. There, he worked as a architectural designer^[1] before establishing a gallery for Austrian and German Expressionist art. In 1968 he opened a commercial art gallery on New York's Madison Avenue. He also collected artworks by Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka, most of which are now exhibited in the Neue Galerie New York.^[2]

Other artists in the Sabarsky collection included Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Lyonel Feininger, Otto Dix, George Grosz.^[3]

Together with Ronald Lauder, he planned the Neue Galerie Museum in New York^[4] which was opened by Lauder after Sabarsky's death in 1996 in New York City.^[5][6][7] The museum café, reminiscent of a Viennese coffee house, bears his name in his honor.^[8]

Lawsuits concerning Nazi-looted art

Sabarsky's name emerged in several lawsuits concerning restitution claims for Nazi-looted art concerning artworks by Grosz and Klimt, and there have been calls for more transparency regarding the collection.^{[9][10][11][12][13][14]}

In September 2023 the Manhattan D.A. arranged for the Sabarsky collection to return a Schiele painting that had been looted from Holocaust victim Fritz Grünbaum to his heirs.^[15]

Publications

• Egon Schiele. 100 Zeichnungen und Aquarelle. Jesuitenkirche – Galerie der Stadt Aschaffenburg, Aschaffenburg 1994.
• Ich, Serge Sabarsky. Autobiographie. Verlag Holzhausen, Wien 1997, ISBN 3-900518-69-6

References

1. "Serge Sabarsky, 83, Art Dealer And Expert on Expressionism". The New York Times. 1996-02-26. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on 2011-12-01. Retrieved 2021-04-06.
2. Price, Renée; Schiele, Egon; Comini, Alessandra (2005). Egon Schiele : The Ronald S. Lauder and Serge Sabarsky Collections. Prestel. ISBN 3-7913-3390-9. OCLC 218810342.
3. Sabarsky, Serge (1989). From Kandinsky to Dix: Paintings of the German Expressionists: Nassau County Museum of Art, November–December 1989. New York: Nassau County Museum of Art.
4. "Lauder, gallery drawn into suit over art said to be looted by Nazis". www.lootedart.com. Archived from the original on 2010-11-24. Retrieved 2021-04-01.
5. "Before The Nazis Came". Forbes. Retrieved 2021-04-01.
6. Expressionists : paintings, watercolors and drawings by 12 German expressionists at the Serge Sabarsky Gallery. Serge Sabarsky Gallery. 1984. OCLC 911049344.
7. "About the collection". Neue Galerie New York. Retrieved 2021-04-01.
8. "Cafe Sabarsky (New York)". newyork.gaycities.com. Retrieved 2021-04-01.
9. "Grosz v. Serge Sabarsky, Inc., 24 A.D.3d 264, 806 N.Y.S.2d 498 (2005) December 22, 2005 – New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division 24 A.D.3d 264, 806 N.Y.S.2d 498". cite.case.law. Retrieved 2021-04-01.
10. Pogrebin, Robin (26 September 2007). "A Dispute Over a Klimt Purchased in New York". The New York Times. Retrieved 2021-04-01 – via lootedart.com. A grandson of a Viennese woman who died in the Holocaust contends that a Gustav Klimt painting in the private collection of Leonard A. Lauder, the New York cosmetics magnate, was looted during World War II, and is seeking restitution.
    The signed oil painting, Blooming Meadow (1906), was purchased by Mr. Lauder in 1983 from Serge Sabarsky, a longtime New York dealer in Austrian and German art. Mr. Sabarsky, together with Mr. Lauder's brother, Ronald, was a founder of the Neue Galerie on Fifth Avenue, which opens a Klimt retrospective next month. (The painting is not in the show.) Leonard Lauder said yesterday that the painting never belonged to the claimant's grandmother and that the argument was without merit.
11. "Critic's heirs sue over 'destroyed' paintings" (PDF).
12. "Six-Year Challenge to Ownership of Art Historian Paul Westheim's Modernist Art Collection Dismissed in New York Supreme Court" (PDF). Charlotte's sister, said in a corresponding affidavit that some works in Westheim's were destroyed during an air raid in Berlin on March 1, 1943, though she "could not by any stretch of the imagination say today how many and which of Mr. Westheim's paintings were burned." In the recent suit, Margit claimed that Melitta's claims in this affidavit were false. In 1973, following Westheim's death, his wife, Marianna Frenk-Westheim, took legal action against Weidler. Frenk-Westheim learned of the sale of a painting—Oskar Kokoschka's portrait Robert Freund II (1931)—from Westheim's collection, and she alleged that Weidler had sold it through Serge Sabarsky Gallery in New York.
13. "Leonard Lauder's Klimt landscape belongs to me, says heir of Nazi victim". www.theartnewspaper.com. 30 September 2007. Retrieved 2021-04-01.
14. Pogrebin, Robin (2007-10-18). "Lauder's Openness Is Sought on Artwork". The New York Times. Retrieved 2021-04-01.
15. "Schiele Artworks to Be Returned to Heirs of Owner Killed by Nazis". lootedart.com. Retrieved 2023-10-12.

External links

• Serge Sabarsky im Online-Archiv der Österreichischen Mediathek