Antonin Juritzky (1887–1961)

Prince Alfred Antonin “Juva” Juritzky-Warberg (also Kuritzki-Warberg) was a Viennese art historian, art collector, and civil servant who was born in Weissenbach an der Triesting, Austria, in 1887. As a dealer, he was affiliated with the Viennese auction house Dorotheum. He lived in the villa “Mon Repos” in Gablitz, near Vienna, and in Paris, where he moved in 1938 for political asylum. Juritzky-Warberg is perhaps best remembered as a collector of stones that resembled animals or figures, which, under the pseudonym Juva, he presented at anthropological conferences as prehistoric artworks. He altered many of these stones by working and painting them. Beginning in 1936, Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss acquired from Juritzky several artworks, which were often negotiated by Royall Tyler. In 1953, he authored the book Prehistoric Man as an Artist (Amsterdam: Nederlandsch Museum voor Anthropologie, 1953). He died in Paris in 1961.