Status: 02.03.2023 2:05 p.m
Never before has a Kandinsky work paid so much: the oil painting “Murnau mit Kirche II” has been auctioned for a record price of 45 million dollars.
A masterpiece by Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky has fetched a record price at auction in London. The oil painting “Murnau mit Kirche II” changed hands for 45 million dollars (42.3 million euros), the auction house Sotheby’s announced. So much had never before been paid for a Kandinsky work.
Eventful history of the painting
The painting from 1910 – a colorful view of the Upper Bavarian village of Murnau with its church tower – has an eventful history: it once adorned the dining room of Johanna Margarethe and Siegbert Stern. The Jewish textile entrepreneurs moved in the same circles as Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka and Albert Einstein in Berlin in the 1920s and built up a large art collection of around 100 paintings and drawings.
Siegbert Stern died in 1935. His wife fled from the Nazis to the Netherlands, but was captured and died in the Auschwitz death camp in 1944.
“Nothing can undo the wrong”
The painting “Murnau mit Kirche II” from the Sterns’ art collection hung in a museum in Eindhoven from 1951. Just last year, it was returned to the Sterns’ heirs, who have now sold it at auction. The 13 heirs, including a family member who hid from the Nazis during the war, share the proceeds.
“Nothing can undo the wrongs of the past,” the family said in a statement. However, the restitution of the painting was “immensely important” for the family, “since it is a recognition and partly closes a wound that has remained open over the generations”.
Sotheby’s auctioned off modern and contemporary art in two auctions on Wednesday evening, with the works fetching a total of £172.6 million. This is an increase of 15 percent compared to a similar auction in June 2022, the British news agency PA reported. However, experts also emphasized that six of the 37 offers were not sold at all and that some works were only sold at an estimated value.