The table had been recently recovered by the heirs of its owner, a German Jew killed by the Nazis.
MO12345lemonde with AFP
A masterpiece of Kandinsky, Monnau put Kirche II, recently recovered by the heirs of his owner, a German Jew killed by the Nazis, was sold to nearly 42 million euros, Wednesday 1 ER MARS, in London, an auction for this artist according to Sotheby’s.
“Kandinsky’s first works are rarely put on the market, most of them being in the large collections of museums around the world,” said the sales center. The table was sold for 37.2 million pounds sterling (41.9 million euros).
This work by Vassily Kandinsky, about a meter over a meter, offers a colorful vision of the German village of Murnau, its pointed roofs and the arrow of its church, stretched just like the peaks of the Bavarian Alps. This oil on canvas, painted in 1910, a pivotal moment of the work of the Russian painter, has long adorned the dining room of Johanna Margarethe and Siegbert Stern, founders of a prosperous textile business.
owner Victim of the Nazis
This couple at the heart of Berlin cultural life in the 1920s, who attended Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka or Albert Einstein, had formed an impressive collection of a hundred paintings and drawings that adorned their interior. If Siegbert Stern died of natural causes in 1935, his wife Johanna Margarethe had to flee the persecution and Germany before being finally the victim of the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis in Auschwitz in May 1944.
It was not almost ten years ago that Monnau put Kirche II was identified in a museum in Eindhoven, in the Netherlands, where he was since 1951. He was returned the year Last to the heirs Stern, whose thirteen survivors will share the fruit of the sale. “Although nothing can defeat the misdeeds of the past, underlined the heirs, the return of this painting which meant so much for our great-grandparents has an immense meaning for us, because it is a recognition and it partially closes a injury that had remained open through generations. “
During this evening was also auction a 4 -meter -long painting from Edvard Munch, dance on the beach (1906), sheltered from the Nazis in a barn in the heart of the Norwegian forest and which has been the subject of a return agreement. In the foreground of the canvas, there are two great loves of the artist, two connections which ended in pain. The table was sold for 16.9 million pounds sterling (19 million euros).
A painting by FRANISK KUPKA, complex (1912), which belonged to actor Sean Connery, was sold to 4.6 million pounds sterling (5.2 million euros). The profits will go to Connery Foundation, which works in Scotland and Bahamas. This sale is part of a series of auctions in London, devoted to modern and contemporary art. At Christie’s of the canvases of Cézanne, Magritte or Picasso estimated at several million euros must also go under the hammer.