Tonight it has been auctioned at Sotheby’s London ‘Murnau with Church II’ by Wassily Kandinsky for £37.2 million ($44.9 million), establishing a new record at auction for the artist. Kandinsky’s early works are rarely released, and most are in major museum collections around the world. Painted in 1910, during a transformative time for the artist, this work encapsulates the beginnings of the revolutionary abstract language that would underpin the rest of Kandinsky’s career and set the next generation of artists on a new path. Executed in an almost square format, favored by avant-garde contemporaries from Monet to Klimt, and with a rich palette, the painting was recently restored to the descendants of Johanna Margarete and Siegbert Samuel Stern. Proceeds from the sale of the painting will be shared among Stern’s thirteen surviving heirs and will also fund an investigation into the fate of the family’s collection.
Helena Newman, President of Sotheby’s Europe, says, “Kandinsky’s Murnau period came to define abstract art for generations to come, and the appearance of such an important painting, one of the last from this period, is an important moment for the market and for collectors. Its restoration after so many years allows us to finally reconnect this remarkable painting with its history and to rediscover the place of the Sterns and their collection in the brilliant cultural setting of 1920s Berlin.”
‘Dance on the Beach’, by Munch
In a year that marks the 25th anniversary of the Washington Principles (which first laid down the ground rules for the restitution of works of art), the painting was one of two featured works returned in tonight’s sale. The other is “Dance on the Beach” by Edvard Munch, from 1906-07. This seminal four meter long painting exploring love, life and death in the Oslo Fjord sold for £16.9 million ($20.5 million), which places it among the ten highest prices ever achieved by the artist at auction.
The painting was originally commissioned as one of twelve canvases conceived as an immersive installation for the avant-garde theater by Max Reinhardt in Berlin. It was acquired by Thomas Olsen, who put together a collection of around thirty works by the artist, including one of the four versions of ‘El grito’. Before that, he had belonged to Dr. Curt Glaser, a major cultural figure in 1930s Berlin who was forced to flee when the National Socialists came to power. It is the only canvas in the Reinhardt series that has remained in private hands.
‘Girl with a boat (Maya)’, by Picasso
In addition, one of the fourteen portraits that Picasso painted of his daughter Maya, between January 1938 and November 1939, the most important series that the artist dedicated to one of his children. ‘Girl with boat (Maya)’, one of Maya’s funniest portrayals, was up for auction today for the first time in more than 20 years. The painting started with an estimate of between 15 and 20 million dollars. It was eventually sold for £18,089,300 ($21.7 million).
Kept by Picasso until his death in 1973, the painting was owned by the couturier Gianni Versace, before being sold by Sotheby’s in London in 1999 as part of the late fashion designer’s collection. Its reappearance on the market coincides with the death of Maya Ruiz-Picasso on December 20, 2022, at 87 years of age.
Painted on February 4, 1938When Maya was two and a half years old – shortly after Picasso finished the monumental and heartbreaking ‘Guernica’ – the portrait is full of exuberant color and energy. Picasso depicts Maya at eye level and captures her restless nature through implied movement, while her face is rendered with the cubist distortion that was common in Picasso’s images of this time. . He would make a last portrait of Maya in 1953, just as she was about to turn eighteen. After her father’s death, Maya would dedicate her adult life to preserving Picasso’s legacy.