A masterpiece by Kandinsky, Murnau with Church IIrecently recovered by the heirs of its owner, a German Jew killed by the Nazis, was sold for nearly 42 million euros on Wednesday 1is March, in London, a new auction record for this artist according to Sotheby’s.
“Kandinsky’s early works are rarely brought to market, the bulk of them being found in major museum collections around the world”, highlighted the auction house. The painting was sold for 37.2 million pounds sterling (41.9 million euros).
This work by Vassily Kandinsky, approximately one meter by one meter, offers a colorful vision of the German village of Murnau, its pointed roofs and the spire of its church, stretched out just like the peaks of the Bavarian Alps. This oil on canvas, painted in 1910, a pivotal moment in the work of the Russian painter, has long adorned the dining room of Johanna Margarethe and Siegbert Stern, founders of a prosperous textile company.
Owner victim of the Nazis
This couple at the heart of Berlin’s cultural life in the 1920s, who frequented Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka or Albert Einstein, had built up an impressive collection of around a hundred paintings and drawings which adorned their interior. If Siegbert Stern died of natural causes in 1935, his wife Johanna Margarethe had to flee persecution and Germany before finally being the victim of the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis in Auschwitz in May 1944.
It was only almost ten years ago that Murnau with Church II was identified in a museum in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, where it had been since 1951. It was returned last year to the Stern heirs, whose thirteen survivors will share the proceeds of the sale. “Though nothing can undo the misdeeds of the pastunderlined the heirs, the restitution of this painting which meant so much to our great-grandparents has an immense significance for us, because it is a recognition and it partially closes a wound which had remained open through the generations. »
During this evening was also auctioned a 4 meter long painting by Edvard Munch, Dance on the beach (1906), sheltered from the Nazis in a barn in the heart of the Norwegian forest and which was the subject of a restitution agreement. In the foreground of the canvas are two great loves of the artist, two liaisons that ended in pain. The painting was sold for 16.9 million pounds sterling (19 million euros).
A painting by Frantisek Kupka, Complex (1912), which was owned by actor Sean Connery, sold for £4.6 million (€5.2 million). Proceeds will go to the Connery Foundation, which works in Scotland and the Bahamas. This sale is part of a series of auctions in London devoted to modern and contemporary art. At Christie’s paintings by Cézanne, Magritte or Picasso estimated at several million euros must also go under the hammer.