A Kandinsky masterpiece -Murnau Mit Kirche II- recently recovered by the heirs of the owner, a German Jew murdered by the Nazis, was auctioned this Wednesday for around 42 million euros.
The amount sold in London constitutes a new auction record for the Russian artist, Sotheby’s auction house underlined.
“Kandinsky’s early works are rarely put on the market, and most of them are in the world’s major museum collections,” the auction house added.
Approximately one meter by one meter, this work by Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) offers a colorful view of the German village of Murnau, its peaked roofs and church tower stretched out like the peaks of the Bavarian Alps.
This oil on canvas, painted in 1910, a pivotal moment in the Russian painter’s work, has graced the dining room of Johanna Margarete and Siegbert Stern, founders of a prosperous textile company, for many decades.
This couple, who lived in the heart of Berlin’s cultural life in the 1920s, together with Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka and Albert Einstein, built an impressive collection of around a hundred paintings and drawings.
If Siegbert Stern died of natural causes in 1935, his wife Johanna Margarette had to flee persecution and Germany before finally falling victim to the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis at Auschwitz in May 1944.
It was almost 10 years ago that the work Murnau Mit Kjirche II was identified in a museum in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, where it had been since 1951.
It was returned last year to the Stern estate, whose 13 survivors will share in the auction proceeds.
“Although nothing can undo the wrongdoings of the past, the return of this painting that meant so much to our great-grandparents has immense meaning for us, as it is an acknowledgment and partially heals a wound that had remained open for generations,” the heirs underlined. .
A four-meter painting by Edward Munch – Dance on the Beach (1906) – which was protected from the Nazis in a barn in the middle of the Norwegian forest and which has been the subject of a restitution agreement, was also auctioned this Wednesday night.
In the foreground of the canvas are the two great loves of the artist, two relationships that ended in pain.
The painting was sold for 19 million euros.
A painting by Frantisek Kupka – Complex (1912) – that belonged to the actor Sean Connery, was sold for 5.2 million euros and this amount will revert to the Connery Foundation, which works in Scotland and the Bahamas.
These sales are part of a series of auctions in London dedicated to modern and contemporary art.
Paintings by Cézanne, Magritte or Picasso valued at several million euros are also expected to go up for auction at Christie’s.
Source: TSF
