Nazi-Looted Kandinsky Heads to Auction

Wassily Kandinsky’s painting Das bunte Leben (1907) is heading to auction at Christie’s after being reclaimed by the heirs of Hedwig and Emanuel Lewenstein-Weyermann.

Confiscated during World War II, the Expressionist painting had spent decades in the collection of Munich’s Lenbachhaus.

The painting is due to be sold on October 14 in the 20th/21st Century London Evening Sale during Frieze week. An early work, it “points toward the radical move into abstraction that would follow”, said Marc Porter, chairman of Christie’s Americas.

The Lewenstein-Weyermanners were Amsterdam-based collectors whose art was seized and dispersed after the Nazi German occupation of the Netherlands.

Restituted works include Kandinsky’s Murnau mit Kirche II (1910), which achieved an artist’s auction record for a painting when it sold for $45m in March 2023.