Born as Siegfried Sabarsky in Vienna, Sarbarsky worked as a clown and set designer for the cabaret Simplicissimus before fleeing the Nazis in 1938, first to Paris, then, in 1939 to New York.
He also collected artworks by Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka, most of which are now exhibited in the Neue Galerie New York.
[2] Other artists in the Sabarsky collection included Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Lyonel Feininger, Otto Dix, George Grosz.
[8] Sabarsky's name emerged in several lawsuits concerning restitution claims for Nazi-looted art concerning artworks by Grosz and Klimt, and there have been calls for more transparency regarding the collection.
arranged for the Sabarsky collection to return a Schiele painting that had been looted from Holocaust victim Fritz Grünbaum to his heirs.