In London today, a statue from the Tugendhat villa will be auctioned

Prague - Today, a rare statue from the Tugendhat villa in Brno will be auctioned at the London auction house Sotheby's. The work by German artist Wilhelm Lehmbruck, titled Torso of a Walking Woman from 1914, has been put up for sale by the descendants of the Tugendhat couple. This is reported by Mladá fronta Dnes (MfD) and Právo. The family is also requesting the return of the Brno villa, which is listed on the UNESCO World Heritage list.
According to MfD, the auction house estimates that the statue will sell for at least 11 million crowns. Právo writes that the catalog estimates the price of the sculpture to be between 250,000 and 350,000 pounds (10.5 to 15 million crowns).
"The Ministry of Culture did not declare the statue a cultural monument, so I had to issue an export permit. It is a great pity," said Marek Pokorný, the director of the Moravian Gallery, according to MfD. The statue had been stored in this gallery's depositories since 1960. The Tugendhats acquired it under a law aimed at alleviating some of the injustices caused by the Holocaust at the end of last year.
The descendants of the Tugendhat couple are also asking the city of Brno and the Ministry of Culture for the return of the entire Tugendhat villa, which the Jewish family left before the war in 1938. The city is now looking for a way to return the villa to them. A decision is to be made by February 15.
The sale of the statue surprised Mayor Roman Onderka (ČSSD). "It raises doubts about how serious the Tugendhats are about restoring the villa to its original condition," the mayor told MfD.
One of the daughters of the original owners, Daniela Hammer Tugendhatová, told the newspaper that the family listed the statue for auction even before requesting the return of the villa. However, they do not intend to withdraw it from the auction. She did not confirm whether they plan to use the money for the renovation of the building. "We don't even know if it will be ours," she stated to MfD.
The villa has been listed since 2001 as the only Czech modern architecture building on the UNESCO World Heritage list. The building, located in the residential neighborhood of Černá Pole, was designed in 1928 by German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe - he was the one who selected the statue Torso of a Walking Woman for the villa’s interior, which is set to be auctioned in London today, according to MfD and Právo.
According to experts, the villa is unique for its spatial concept, choice of materials, and furnishings. Its owners, Gréta and Fritz Tugendhat, came from families of prominent textile manufacturers. They inhabited the house until 1938, when the family emigrated to Switzerland and then to Venezuela to escape the Nazis. After the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia, the Gestapo confiscated the villa in 1940. In 1945, it was seized by the then Czechoslovak state as property of the Nazis.