Austria won’t buy art awarded to L.A. heir

Austria’s government said Thursday it cannot afford to buy back five Gustav Klimt paintings that a court has ordered returned to a California woman who says the Nazis stole them from her Jewish family.

Elisabeth Gehrer, Austria’s minister in charge of education and culture, said the government wanted to acquire the masterpieces but decided it could not afford the $300-million price tag. Last month, an arbitration court awarded the paintings to Maria Altmann of Los Angeles, who says they were looted from her family by the Nazis.

“Therefore the paintings are immediately available for her to inherit,” Gehrer said in statement.

She said the government’s Council of Ministers could not find the cash in its budget to keep the paintings in Austria, where they are widely considered to be national treasures.

“We’re simply unable” to buy the paintings, Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel said. “Further negotiations are pointless.”

Altmann’s attorney, E. Randol Schoenberg, told The Times on Thursday that the family had been bound by an agreement to allow the Austrian government the first option of buying the paintings but that now the five heirs are free to consider all options for the disposition of the artworks.

“Every option is open,” Schoenberg said. “Now they can entertain all the possibilities, including exhibiting, selling, auctioning, storing and so forth.”

Gehrer had proposed after the Jan. 16 court ruling that Austria be allowed to continue displaying at least two of the best-known works as national treasures. Even then, however, she acknowledged that there was not enough money to buy them and Austria was obligated to return them under laws mandating the restitution of art objects to Holocaust victims.

Altmann, 89, a retired clothing boutique operator, was one of the heirs of the family that owned the paintings before the Nazis took over Austria in 1938.

Although she waged a seven-year legal battle to recover them, she had also made clear that she preferred the works to remain on public display rather than disappear into a private collection.

Austria’s decision to give up the artworks that have been displayed for decades in Vienna’s ornate Belvedere castle represents the costliest concession since it began returning valuable art objects looted by the Nazis.