LACMA Secures Landmark Gift of Austrian Expressionist Works from the Kallir Family

<img decoding="async" class="lazyload wp-image-1592857 size-full-width" src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==" data-src="https://observer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/10/2.-Egon-Schiele-Sawmill-1913-Kallir-Family-Collection-promised-gift-to-the-Los-Angeles-County-Museum-of-Art-photo-courtesy-Kallir-Research-Institute-New-York.jpeg?quality=80&w=970" alt="A rugged green landscape with a long wooden sawmill stretching across the middle ground, rendered in Schiele’s expressive linework and earthy palette beneath jagged mountain peaks." width="970" height="868" data-caption='Egon Schiele, <em>Sawmill</em> (1913). <span class=”lazyload media-credit”>Courtesy of the Kallir Research Institute, New York</span>’>

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) recently announced a major gift of more than 130 works of Austrian Expressionism from the family of Otto Kallir, the visionary art dealer and historian who played a crucial role in bringing Austrian and modern European art to international prominence. Kallir founded the legendary Galerie St. Etienne in Vienna in 1923 and, after fleeing Nazi persecution, reestablished it in New York in 1939. One of the first galleries championing Austrian modernism, it became the primary force behind the posthumous recognition of Egon Schiele.

Kallir organized the first major Schiele exhibitions in Europe and the United States and fiercely promoted the work of artists like Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka and Richard Gerstl, along with other Viennese modernists and German Secessionist artists, building both the market and the scholarly foundation that brought these artists to international attention.

The collection will be transferred to LACMA over several years, marking the first time Los Angeles will have a significant holding capable of presenting a comprehensive overview of Austrian Expressionism—from its origins at the turn of the 20th Century through the 1920s. The gift includes paintings, more than 100 drawings, prints, posters and works by artist-designers affiliated with the Wiener Werkstätte (founded in 1903). LACMA will present the works in a major exhibition accompanied by a scholarly publication in 2030, but a first group of 24 works will already be featured in the special exhibition “Austrian Expressionism and Otto Kallir,” curated by Timothy O. Benson and opening on November 23.

Growing up in the final, tumultuous decade of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Kallir began championing artists like Schiele and Klimt shortly after their deaths. In the case of Richard Gerstl (1883-1908), whose career was cut tragically short and whose work had largely vanished, it was Kallir who recovered the estate, introducing him first to the Viennese public and later to the international art world.

Notably, some of the works in this gift were brought to the United States directly by Kallir after he emigrated. With key examples from each artist’s oeuvre, the collection underscores his role not only as a dealer and scholar preserving artists endangered by war and exile, but also as a vital transatlantic cultural bridge who helped rewrite the global art historical canon.

At the core of the gift are 27 seminal works by Egon Schiele, including two major 1913 landscape paintings, 19 works on paper, 14 intense figure studies and six deeply expressive self-portraits. Also included is Gustav Klimt’s Woman with the Fur Collar (1897), a psychologically charged and symbolically rich painting. There are also five extremely rare works by Richard Gerstl, including a self-portrait painted just five weeks before his death at age 25, as well as ten works by Alfred Kubin, the Bohemian artist who has recently seen a resurgence in international interest. The gift furthermore includes two gestural drawings of women by Oskar Kokoschka, alongside works by German modernists and Secessionists Kallir championed internationally, such as Käthe Kollwitz, Berlin Secessionist Lovis Corinth and Viennese-born Marie-Louise von Motesiczky, who studied under Frankfurt Secession key figure Max Beckmann.

After Kallir’s death in 1978, Galerie St. Etienne was run for forty years by his granddaughter Jane Kallir and his longtime colleague Hildegard Bachert until its closure in 2020. Jane Kallir then founded the Kallir Research Institute, which continues to promote critical scholarship in Austrian and German Expressionism.

“We chose LACMA because of the museum’s longstanding commitment to Germanic Expressionism,” explained Jane Kallir with her sister Barbara has spent time tin Los Angeles and has developed deep ties to its cultural institutions. “Despite organizing numerous groundbreaking exhibitions in this area, the museum until now had no paintings by the major Austrian modernists, Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Richard Gerstl. In one fell swoop, we have completed their collection,” she told Observer.

Kallir, in her statement to the press, also commented on how museum collaboration had always been key to her grandfather Otto Kallir’s promotion of Austrian Expressionism in the U.S., and said he would be thrilled to see these works enter LACMA’s collection. She also noted that LACMA’s central role in the Austrian émigré community in California’s postwar culture was another primary reason the family chose the museum as the permanent home for the collection.

The Kallir family gift will significantly enhance and complement LACMA’s holdings of German Expressionist paintings, sculpture and works on paper. Beginning in 2026, the Kallir Research Institute will also support the study of Austrian Expressionism through the Rifkind Center’s scholar-in-residence program, encouraging cutting-edge research and new perspectives on early 20th-century German-speaking culture.

“These Austrian artists had a much more personal, humanistic approach to image-making than was common in Western Europe at the time,” Kallir said, adding that the Austrian contribution is key to rebalancing our view of modernism, which for many years was dominated by a formalist orientation.

In addition to the gift to LACMA, the Kallir Family is also donating rare Viennese books, portfolios and prints published by Otto Kallir to the Getty Research Institute. “Like all great dealers, Otto Kallir had an eye for quality,” Kallir said of her grandfather, “After he lost his native land to the Nazis, he wanted to save Austria’s cultural heritage by reestablishing it in his new home, the U.S. He did this through repeated (initially unsuccessful) exhibitions, museum collaborations, and donations.”

Together, these donations—along with the upcoming exhibitions and research initiatives—promise to add a new chapter to the cultural dialogue between Austria and Southern California, acknowledging how Los Angeles’ cultural scene was significantly shaped and nourished by the contributions of émigré artists, musicians, actors, architects, writers and filmmakers after World War II, including notable names such as Fritz Lang, Lotte Lenya, Peter Lorre, Richard Neutra, Otto Preminger, Arnold Schoenberg, Rudolf Schindler, Joseph von Sternberg, Franz Werfel and Billy Wilder, among others.

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