It reappears almost a century later in Tefaf a portrait of Klimt to a Ghanaian prince for sale for 15 million euros

The artist’s portrait Gustav Klimt to the prince of Ghana Guillmomos has reappeared after 97 years At the Tefaf Maastricht contemporary art fair thanks to the Viennese Wienerroith & Kohlbachepor (W & K) gallery. Tefaf sources have confirmed to Europa Press that the paint is on sale for 15 million euros.

The portrait-made of 1897-should have made its first public appearance in the ‘stand’ of the Austrian gallery in the last edition of the Fair. However, local media explain that “Sudden legal uncertainties“They prevented their presentation.

This rediscovery began in 2021 when a couple of collectors went to W & K and presented the painting, poorly framed and Very dirty, in which a seal of Gustav Klimt “barely visible” was found, As explained by the gallery itself.

Alfred Weidinger, an expert Professor in Klimt painting and author of the reasoned catalog published in 2007, quickly clarified that it was a “lost” picture of an African prince that he had been looking for for two decades. This painting belongs to the artist’s first years and it shows an important representative of the Ghana OSU (GA) and was created in the context of Völkerschau in Vienna of 1897.

Weidinger assures that not only documes a “stylistic change” phase in Klimt’s work, but also It reflects the historical “complex interdependencies” between Europe and the rest of the world.

After Klimt painted the portrait, This remained “probably” in the hands of the artist until 1923, when he would be auctioned at the House of Austs S. Kende de Vienna. Subsequently, in 1928, it is documented as a loan for Klimt’s commemorative exhibition in Vienna’s secession as owned by Ernestine Klein.

Klein and her husband Felix, who had become the old Klimt study into the Viennese neighborhood of Hetzing, were forced to flee in 1938 due to their Jewish origins and although they survived war in Monaco, the painting remained lost until it was completely rediscovered in 2023.