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Natascha Eichinger

Stories from Natascha Eichinger

jewish museum
The World's Oldest Jewish Museum Looks to the Future
The Palais Eskeles reopens its doors, with its corridors yielding an open space for new exhibitions, and conversations
Natascha Eichinger
27/10/2011

Light and luminous. That is the impression conveyed by Vienna’s “new” Jewish Museum, which re-opened in October after a nine month face-lift that cost a total of €2.6 million. The darkness of the Holocaust recedes from view, while gleaming Torah crowns in illumined showcases recall the wealth and vibrancy of Jewish life in the Habsburg Empire. 

Crunchtime
Something Rotten in the State of Austria
Shady lobbyists and greedy ministers: Unravelling corruption scandals call for more transpare ncy in Austrian politics
Natascha Eichinger
03/10/2011

Four-hundred pages was the length of the report issued by forensic experts in August this year, identifying the extent of dubious payments and contracts conducted by Telekom Austria, the country’s largest telecom provider and a former public utility that is still 28 per cent state-owned.

06 A painting by Derek Pigrum
Lesson in Creativity
Artist Derek Pigrum argues that everyone is creative, but that people often do not allow their surroundings to inspire them
Natascha Eichinger
01/12/2009

A monumental industrial table, covered in streaked dried up layers of paint and glue looking like a frenzied Jackson Pollack action painting, littered with brushes, pencils, and paper. This is the remaining debris of creative battles fought out that Wednesday in Derek Pigrum’s art room, the pungent intoxicating scents of oil paint and turpentine still lingering in the air.

09 Dorotheum Auction
Art Dealer Doldrums
Vienna auctions continue strong even as the crisis hits world markets
Natascha Eichinger
01/11/2009

Just one year ago, the art market was booming. Liquidity was flowing through the global economy, and the top echelons of society were flourishing. Auction houses were raking in money with record high sales. In May 2006 Picasso’s Dora Maar au Chat sold for $95.2 million followed by Klimt’s Adele Bloch-bauer II reaching $87.9 million at the November auction within that same year.

03 Vermeer
Restitution And Remorse
The fate of Nazi art still writes headlines; With the Vermeer, Austria may prevail.
Natascha Eichinger
01/10/2009

The Art of Painting by the world-renowned 17th century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer hangs serenely, where it has hung for 63 years, in the grand Picture Galleries of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. However it may not be there much longer, if the Austrian courts uphold a restitution claim of the family who had owned it for 130 years until they were forced to sell it to the Nazis to buy their freedom.

09 Der Notverkauf by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller
The Lavish Light of Everyday
Waldmüller’s hyperrealism of the not-so-cozy Biedermeier era; a retrospective at the Belvedere
Natascha Eichinger
01/07/2009

Ferdinand George Waldmüller was fascinated by light. His remarkable study Elm Trees in the Prater is a wild array of color captured on the bark and leaves radiating in the bright sunlight setting off shadows that outline the angular, contortions of the trees, a rush of life and energy. Waldmüller was breaking new ground in his time, moving away from the Dutch traditions of using light as a dramatic effect, and instead studied how light can transform color.

Burden of Proof
Restitution Claims May Still Tarnish Austria's Image
Natascha Eichinger
18/02/2009

 

The paintings under dispute were clearly worth in the tens of millions of euros, so you would expect the atmosphere to be a little tense. Collector Rudolf Leopold can produce bills of sale for all of them; but that's not the point. And Salzburg law professor Georg Graf was more than happy to expound his legal opinion on the eight paintings owned or held by the Leopold Museum Foundation, that could possibly be stolen Jewish art.

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