A painting by Wassily Kandinsky that the Nazis took from an Amsterdam family in 1940 sold at auction in London on Wednesday 14 October for £31.56 million, roughly €31.9 million.
Christie’s had expected Das bunte Leben (1907) to fetch between £18 million and £25 million.
The heirs of Emmanuel and Hedwig Lewenstein sold the work after fighting for years to get it back.
From the Stedelijk to Munich
Emmanuel Lewenstein, of the Amsterdam sewing machine maker Naaimachines, bought the painting with his wife in 1927.
After he died in 1930, Hedwig loaned it to the Stedelijk Museum.
The Nazis seized the Lewenstein collection in October 1940, and the Kandinsky was sold at auction to Sal Slijper.
Slijper’s widow sold it to the Bayerische Landesbank in 1972, and it hung in a Munich museum for more than 50 years.
Returned after a court ruling
The couple’s children, Robert and Wilhelmine, spent years after the war trying to recover their parents’ collection.
In 2023, German courts ruled that the painting was looted art, and the bank returned it to them that same year.
Christie’s called it one of Kandinsky’s early masterworks.
Check out our guide to Amsterdam’s best art galleries.