Klimt portrait missing for almost a century and valued at up to 50 million is auctioned

Vienna (Austria), Apr 23 (EFE/EPA) - A mysterious model with a suggestive gaze. A painting that has been missing for almost a hundred years. The Nazi plundering. All these elements come together in the auction tomorrow of a masterpiece by Gustav Klimt whose estimated value of between 30 and 50 million euros may be small in the face of the international interest it has generated.

IMAGES: LUIS LIDÓN.

FOOTAGE OF THE IM KINSKY AUCTION HOUSE AND KLIMT'S PAINTING IS CALLED "PORTRAIT OF MISS LIESER".

TRANSLATIONS:

Claudia Mörth-Gasser, art expert of the auction house.

1.- "This is a fantastic rediscovery. The painting was considered lost for decades. It is one of the last works created by Gustav Kind and probably one of his most beautiful portraits from his last period. Although the painting is documented in the bibliography of all Gustav Klimk catalogs, it was only known from a single black-and-white photograph, the negative of which is preserved in the archives of the Austrian National Library. This means that the incredible colors of this painting were not known".

2.- "Gustav Klimt's portraits are characterized by a naturalistic and very delicate representation of the faces of his models. It can be seen that he has highlighted with very precise strokes the lips, the beautiful shape of the nose, the striking arches of the eyebrows, and even the reflections of the pupils. Her appearance alone is charming, but so is the painting itself. It is wonderful because it shows us a very modern Klimt who, at the end of his life, took in his painting a direction toward the future. One wonders where Klimt's painting would have gone had he not died of a stroke in February 1918."