Rudolf Leopold

Rudolf Leopold (March 1, 1925 – June 29, 2010) was an Austrian art collector whose collection, comprising more than 5,000 works of art, was established as a private foundation in 1994. The foundation was created and financed by the Government of Austria, the National Bank of Austria, and the collector himself. This private foundation became the foundation for the Leopold Museum in Vienna, where Rudolf Leopold was appointed lifelong director. The collection's art-historical focus, primarily consisting of works from the early 19th century to 1938, centers around the paintings of Egon Schiele. The Leopold Museum houses the world's largest and most significant collection of Schiele's work, alongside masterpieces by other major Austrian artists of the period, such as Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka. The museum also displays Secessionist-style crafts, furniture, and design. Today, the Leopold Museum stands as the leading institution for showcasing a representative overview of the art of "Vienna 1900," in all its forms and media.

In 2006, Jewish Holocaust survivors made claims that certain pieces in the collection—two oil paintings and five works on paper by Egon Schiele, as well as five minor works by Anton Romako—were looted by the Nazis and should be returned to their rightful owners, or resolved according to the so-called Washington Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art. All these claims have since been settled. Provided by Wikipedia