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“Portrait of Wally”, Egon Schiele’s tender picture of his mistress, Walburga (“Wally”) Neuzil, is the pride of the Leopold Museum in Vienna. But for 13 years the painting was locked up in New York, caught in a legal battle between the Austrian museum and the Jewish family from whom the Nazis seized the painting in 1939.

Reviews

clg238
2012/05/11

This is an important documentary. One one level, it's about one Nazi's theft of "Portrait of Wally," a painting by Egon Schiele, from a Jewish household in Austria just before World War II, and a decades-long fight by the tenacious Lea Bonni, the painting's owner, and her family, for justice. But more important, perhaps, it's about how revered institutions, e.g., the Museum of Modern Art and NPR (yes, National Public Radio) fought against efforts to restore the painting to its rightful owner. Even in an age of skepticism, such as ours, this film is jaw-dropping when it comes to outing some of the "bad guys." The filmmakers did their homework—they have the documents, the interviews. The list of thank you's at the end reaffirms the width and breadth of their documentation. That said, the film is totally gripping, enlightening about history and the art world, and it flies by quickly. For fans of Schiele's work, it's an extra pleasure, but it's for everyone who cares about making the world a better place.

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