Austrian art collector Rudolf Leopold, who has been credited with putting the works of Egon Schiele on the map, died Tuesday in Vienna at the age of 85, his museum confirmed.
The trained ophthalmologist amassed a collection that was valued at 574 million euros (698 million dollars) in the mid-1990s.
His Leopold Museum in central Vienna contains not only the world’s leading Schiele collection, but also key works by Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka and other Austrian artists of the art nouveau period and early 20th century.
After Leopold organized a Schiele exhibition in Amsterdam in 1955, art experts and lovers started to reappraise the expressionist painter and draughtsman who died in 1918.
www.leopoldmuseum.org
