A Kandinsky masterpiece,
Murnau Mit Kirche II
, recently recovered by the heirs of its owner, a German Jew killed by the Nazis, has sold for almost £37.2 million (£41.9 million). euros) Wednesday evening in London, a new auction record for this artist according to Sotheby's.
"
Kandinsky
's early works
rarely hit the market, with the bulk of them found in major museum collections around the world
," the auction house said.
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.
An oil on canvas painted in 1910, a pivotal moment in the work of the Russian painter, the painting has long adorned the dining room of Johanna Margarete and Siegbert Stern, a couple of German Jews, founders of a prosperous textile business.
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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 Margarette 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's been almost 10 years since
Murnau Mit Kjirche II
was identified in a museum in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, where he had been since 1951. He was returned last year to the Stern heirs, whose 13 survivors will share the proceeds of the sale.
Close a wound
"
Although nothing can undo the misdeeds of the past
, the heirs underlined,
the return of this painting which meant so much to our great-grandparents has an immense meaning for us, because it is a recognition and it partially closes a wound that had remained open through the generations
”.
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Sotheby's also auctioned a four-metre-long painting by Edvard Munch,
Dance on the Beach
(1906), which was sheltered from the Nazis in a barn in the heart of the Norwegian forest and which was the subject of of a restitution agreement.
In the foreground of the canvas are two great loves of the artist, two liaisons that ended in pain.
This painting was sold for 16.9 million pounds sterling (19 million euros).
A painting by Frantisek Kupka,
Complex
(1912), which belonged to actor Sean Connery, was sold for 4.6 million pounds sterling (5.2 million euros).
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.