The Otto Kallir family gifted more than 130 Austrian Expressionist works to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The gift will add the first paintings by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, and Richard Gerstl to LACMA’s collection.
The collection of works surveys the beginnings of Austrian Expressionism from the turn of the 20th century through the 1920s, with paintings, drawings, prints, posters, and mixed-medium works by artist-designers associated with the Wiener Werkstätte company.
Additional highlights includes works by Oskar Kokoschka, Alfred Kubin, and Marie-Louise von Motesiczky and by the German artists Lovis Corinth and Käthe Kollwitz.
The gift was transferred to LACMA’s holdings over the course of several years. The works on paper will join the holdings of the Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies at LACMA.
Gustav Klimt: Woman with Fur Collar, 1897.
Courtesy Kallir Research Institute
A selection of 24 works from the donation will be on view in the exhibition “Austrian Expressionism and Otto Kallir” from November 23 through May 31, 2026. In January, a panel discussion with Jane Kallir and leading art historians and documentary screening and conversation are expected to take place.
Next year, the Kallir Research Institute will support LACMA’s study of Austrian Expressionism via the Rifkind Center’s scholar-in-residence program. A comprehensive exhibition of the Kallir donation is slated for 2030.
“Although LACMA has a distinguished collection of German Expressionist paintings and sculptures, we have long felt the lack of paintings by Austrian Expressionists. In a single stroke, this marvelous donation has transformed our holdings, bringing us our first paintings by Schiele, Klimt, Gerstl, and Marie-Louise von Motesiczky,” Stephanie Barron, LACMA senior curator and head of the Modern Ar department, said in a statement.
Oskar Kokoschka: Venice Harbor Scene, 1913.
© Fondation Oskar Kokoschka, Vevey/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/Prolitters, Switzerland
Art dealer Otto Kallir (1894-1978) was active starting in the early 1920s, prior to the Nazi annexation of Austria. In 1939, after emigrating and moving to New York, Kallir established the Galerie St. Etienne, which furthered the work and legacy of Austrian Expressionists for 80 years.
A number of the works included in the gift were brought over by Kallir from Vienna during his emigration. When the gallery closed in 2020, granddaughter and Austrian modernism scholar Jane Kallir established The Kallir Research Institute to advance critical research on Austrian and German Expressionism.
“Museum collaboration was key to Otto Kallir’s promotion of Austrian Expressionism in the U.S., and I know he would be thrilled to see these works enter LACMA’s collection,” said Jane Kallir. “LACMA’s longstanding commitment to Expressionism, as well as the centrality of the Austrian émigré community to California’s postwar culture, were the primary reasons we chose LACMA as the permanent home for our family’s collection.”
In addition this donation to LACMA, the Kallir family is giving a number of rare Viennese books, portfolios, and prints published by Kallir to the Getty Research Institute.
