Nazi-looted Kandinsky painting that was returned to Jewish heirs fetches $42 million at auction

A painting by Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky has sold for almost $42 million at an auction in London, capping a saga that saw the Jewish-owned artwork get looted by the Nazis in 1940 in the Netherlands, spend decades in a German museum, and then be returned in 2023 to the heirs of its pre-Holocaust owners.

The 1907 painting “The Colorful Life” will now be owned by an unidentified bidder after the Christie’s auction, according to The New York Times.

From November 1927, the painting belonged to Hedwig and Emanuel Albert Lewenstein, a Jewish couple living in Amsterdam, and was part of their extensive art collection. The piece, which had been on loan from the Lewenstein family to the Stedelijk Museum, was auctioned off in unclear circumstances on October 9, 1940 — just a few months after Germany’s Wehrmacht occupied the Netherlands — at an auction house in Amsterdam.

The art piece was acquired by Salomon B. Slijper, whose widow sold it to Bayerische Landesbank in 1972 for 900,000 Dutch guilders. For the next five decades, it was on loan to the Staedtische 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 recommended that this request be heeded, since any artwork seized during the Nazi occupation must be presumed to have been taken by force unless there is evidence otherwise. The painting was handed to the Jewish heirs shortly thereafter.

AP contributed to this report.