Woman awarded Nazi-stolen artworks

LOS ANGELES, Jan. 17 (UPI) -- A court in Austria ordered its government to hand over five Nazi-stolen paintings worth nearly $150 million to a Jewish woman living in Los Angeles.

The ruling by the arbitration court on the rare paintings by Gustav Klimt ends a seven-year legal battle for Maria Altmann, whose family fled Vienna in 1939, reports The Los Angeles Times.

The most valuable of the paintings is the 1907 portrait of Altmann's aunt, which one Klimt expert called "the most important painting that has ever been restituted" in a Nazi art case, the report said.

The Austrian government has not responded to the ruling, but the director of Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum of fine arts reportedly told the Austrian Press Association that although "a precious asset of the Austrian Gallery has been lost," the decision "should be accepted."

Jane Kallir with the Galerie St. Etienne in New York, which staged the first U.S. exhibition of Klimt's work in 1959, called the ruling a surprising but significant move.

How the paintings will be disposed off has not been decided but Altmann insists they should remain in public institutions.