SPAIN — Wassily Kandinsky’s painting “The Kiss” sold at auction for $44.9 million after spending decades in a Dutch museum after its Jewish owner was killed in the Holocaust.
At a Sotheby’s auction in London on Wednesday night, “Murnau mit Kirche II” (also known as “Murnau with Church II”) sold for a new record price for the Russian artist. The brightly colored landscape of a Bavarian village finished in 1910 foreshadows the bold abstract imagery of Kandinsky’s later work.
The Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven has returned a painting to the German Jewish art collectors Johanna Margarete Stern and Siegbert Samuel Stern’s family in the past year.
After Siegbert Stern passed away in 1935, Johanna was compelled to sell a large portion of her collection to escape Nazi Germany and settle in Amsterdam. Soon after the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, she was taken into custody and ultimately perished in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944.
According to Sotheby’s, the money raised will be split among the 13 surviving Kandinsky Stern heirs and used to investigate what happened to the collection.
Some 139 works of art were discovered in Dutch museums in 2013 to have been stolen by the Nazis. These works included paintings by masters such as Kandinsky, Henri Matisse, and Paul Klee.
paintings by masters such as Kandinsky, Henri Matisse, and Paul Klee
The Jewish family who originally owned “Painting With Houses” by Kandinsky will receive it back from Amsterdam in 2021. The city of Amsterdam paid $600 at auction for this piece of Stedelijk Museum artwork in 1940.
The global head of restitution at Sotheby’s, Lucian Simmons, pointed out that this year marks the silver anniversary of a Washington, DC, international conference on looted art from 1998, kandinksywhich concluded that previous attempts to return looted art hadn’t gone far enough.
Since then, “the restitution department at Sotheby’s has worked with many heirs and families to reunite them with their stolen property and, simultaneously, to help retell their stories and celebrate their lives,” Simmons said.
Another recently restored and auctioned-off piece at Sotheby’s was “Dance on the Beach” by Edvard Munch, which brought in $16.9 million (£10.5 million).
After its Jewish owner, Curt Glaser, was forced to flee Nazi Germany; he sold the massive painting to Norwegian ship owner Thomas Olsen in the 1930s. The painting was one of several created for theatre impresario Max Reinhardt.
Olsen hid his extensive Munch collection, including a reproduction of “The Scream,” during the Nazi occupation of Norway in World War II.
The painting was sold “subject to an agreement” between the Olsen and Glaser families, according to Sotheby’s transaction description.
SOURCE – (AP)
