Among the casualties were examples by Henri Matisse, Edgar Degas, Kurt Schwitters, Jean Pougny and Egon Schiele.

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For instance the Getty show includes drawings by Egon Schiele, photographs by Arnulf Rainer, and prints by Bruce Nauman.

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Powerful works by Lucio Fontana, Gerhard Richter, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Egon Schiele all sold well, with some achieving record prices.

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Just as successful was one of the Egon Schiele gouaches that sold to benefit Ronald Lauder's jewel-like little Neue Galerie in New York, and a roughly hewn head in wood carved in 1916-1917 by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, a German Expressionist sculptor.

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Once home to composers including Beethoven, Mozart, and Johann Strauss, and to artists Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele, as well as the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, Vienna has been at the forefront of major cultural movements for centuries.

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There are those whose tastes mold institutions, like cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder , who bought his first drawing, a work by Austrian Expressionist Egon Schiele , with money from his bar mitzvah and went on to fund and found the Neue Galerie New York to showcase German and Austrian art.

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