Kandinsky painting, restituted to Jewish family after Nazi looting, sells for over $42 million
'The Colorful Life' exceeds upper limit of estimated price by almost $10 million after six-minute bidding war, becoming highest-valued lot of the night, Christie's says
A Nazi-looted Wassily Kandinsky painting, restored to the descendants of its Jewish owners in 2023, sold for over $42 million at a London auction on Wednesday, surpassing its estimated value and setting the night’s highest price, Christie’s auction house said.
The vibrant 1907 painting, “Das bunte Leben” (The Colorful Life) — described by Christie’s as “a monumental turning point on Kandinsky’s road to abstraction” — shows a festive scene in a valley in front of a heated argument at the foot of a mountain with a palace at the peak.
After a six-minute bidding war, the roughly 130-by-162-centimeter (about 4’3” by 5’4”) signed canvas sold for £31,560,000 ($42,025,000), besting the estimated price range of £18 million and £25 million ($24 million to $33.3 million), according to Christie’s, which did not identify the buyer.
The painting was bought by Amsterdam Jewish couple Hedwig and Emanuel Albert Lewenstein in November 1927, and was on loan to the Stedelijk Museum from 1933.
The couple died before World War II and left their extensive art collection to their two children, both of whom left Europe before or early in the war.
The painting was auctioned off under unclear circumstances on October 9, 1940 — less than five months into Nazi Germany’s occupation of the Netherlands — to Salomon Slijper, a Dutch Jewish businessman who survived the war in hiding.
In 1972, the year after Slijper died, his widow Johanna sold the painting to Bayerische Landesbank, the state bank of Bavaria, for 900,000 Dutch guilders — equivalent to about $5 million in 2026.
For the next five decades, it was on loan to the Stadtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau museum in Munich.
The Lewensteins’ heirs filed a lawsuit in 2017, demanding that the painting be handed to them.
In 2023, an independent German commission determined that the Kandinsky painting “was seized as a result of persecution” of Jews under German occupation. It recommended the piece be restored to the Lewensteins’ heirs.
The bank implemented the recommendation in June that year, enabling the Lewenstein heirs to put the painting up for auction.
AP contributed to this report.