Serge Sabarsky (November 3, 1912 – February 23, 1996) was an art collector and art dealer of the 20th century.

Life

Born as Siegfried Sabarsky in Vienna, Sarbarsky worked as a clown and set designer for the cabaret Simplicissimus before fleeing the

Nazis Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

in 1938, first to Paris, then, in 1939 to New York. There, he worked as a architectural designer before establishing a gallery for Austrian and German

Expressionist art Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radi ...

. In 1968 he opened a commercial art gallery on New York's

Madison Avenue Madison Avenue is a north-south avenue in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, New York, that carries northbound one-way traffic. It runs from Madison Square (at 23rd Street) to meet the southbound Harlem River Drive at 142nd Stree ...

. He also collected artworks by

Egon Schiele Egon Leo Adolf Ludwig Schiele (; 12 June 1890 – 31 October 1918) was an Austrian Expressionist painters, painter. His work is noted for its intensity and its raw sexuality, and for the many self-portraits the artist produced, including nude sel ...

Gustav Klimt Gustav Klimt (14 July 1862 – 6 February 1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter and a founding member of the Vienna Secession movement. His work helped define the Art Nouveau style in Europe. Klimt is known for his paintings, murals, sket ...

and

Oskar Kokoschka Oskar Kokoschka (1 March 1886 – 22 February 1980) was an Austrian artist, poet, playwright and teacher, best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes, as well as his theories on vision that influenced the Viennese Expre ...

, most of which are now exhibited in the

Neue Galerie New York The Neue Galerie New York ( German for "New Gallery") is a museum of early twentieth-century German and Austrian art and design located in the William Starr Miller House at 86th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City. Established in 2001, ...

. Other artists in the Sabarsky collection included

Wassily Kandinsky Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky ( – 13 December 1944) was a Russian painter and art theorist. Kandinsky is generally credited as one of the pioneers of abstract art, abstraction in western art. Born in Moscow, he spent his childhood in ...

Paul Klee Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented wi ...

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (6 May 1880 – 15 June 1938) was a German Expressionism, expressionist Painting, painter and printmaker and one of the founders of the artists group Die Brücke or "The Bridge", a key group leading to the foundation of Expr ...

Lyonel Feininger Lyonel Charles Adrian Feininger (; July 17, 1871January 13, 1956) was a German-American painter, and a leading exponent of Expressionism. He also worked as a caricaturist and comic strip artist. He was born and grew up in New York City. In 1887 h ...

Otto Dix Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix (; 2 December 1891 – 25 July 1969) was a German painter and Printmaking, printmaker, noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of German society during the Weimar Republic and the brutality of war. Alon ...

George Grosz George Grosz (; ; born Georg Ehrenfried Groß; July 26, 1893 – July 6, 1959) was a German artist known especially for his caricatural drawings and paintings of Berlin life in the 1920s. He was a prominent member of the Berlin Dada and New Obj ...

. Together with

Ronald Lauder Ronald Steven Lauder (born February 26, 1944) is an American businessman and pro-Israel political activist. He and his brother, Leonard Lauder, are the sole heirs to the Estée Lauder Companies, Estée Lauder cosmetics company, founded by their ...

, he planned the Neue Galerie Museum in New York which was opened by Lauder after Sabarsky's death in 1996 in New York City. The museum café, reminiscent of a Viennese coffee house, bears his name in his honor.

Lawsuits concerning Nazi-looted art

Sabarsky's name emerged in several lawsuits concerning restitution claims for Nazi-looted art concerning artworks by Grosz and Klimt, and there have been calls for more transparency regarding the collection. In September 2023 the Manhattan D.A. arranged for the Sabarsky collection to return a Schiele painting that had been looted from Holocaust victim Fritz Grünbaum to his heirs.

Publications

* ''Egon Schiele. 100 Zeichnungen und Aquarelle''. Jesuitenkirche – Galerie der Stadt Aschaffenburg, Aschaffenburg 1994. * ''Ich, Serge Sabarsky. Autobiographie''. Verlag Holzhausen, Wien 1997, ISBN 3-900518-69-6

References

External links

Serge Sabarsky
im Online-Archiv der Österreichischen Mediathek {{DEFAULTSORT:Sabarsky, Serge 1996 deaths 1912 births American art patrons American art collectors American art dealers Austrian emigrants to the United States