A German government advisory committee has decided that a painting by Wassily Kandinsky should be returned to the heirs of the Jewish family who owned it before it was auctioned off during World War II.
The artwOrk by Kandinsky colorful life from 1907, belonged to the Amsterdam-based couple Hedwig and Emanuel Albert Lewenstein and was bequeathed to their two sons when they died before the war. The painting was on loan to the Stedelijk Museum when it was transferred to the Frederik Muller & Co. auction house in early September 1940, just months after the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. The canvas is sold on October 9, 1940.
How Kandinsky’s painting ended up at auction is unclear. Bavarian public bank BayernLB, which currently owns the artwork, argued that the Lewensteins could have entrusted the piece themselves. But by then the Lewensteins’ two sons, Robert and Wilhelmine, had fled the Netherlands for New York and Mozambique, respectively.
“It cannot be proven on whose initiative the painting was sold as part of the Lewenstein estate at auction house Frederik Muller & Co. during the auction,” the panel said on Tuesday, according to THE Associated press.
Although there is no documentation to suggest that colorful life was taken from the Lewensteins under duress, the German advisory commission concluded that “the painting was seized as a result of persecutions” against the family, who were Jewish. The panel recommended that BayernLB return the painting to the Lewenstein heirs.
The commission’s recommendations are not legally binding, although they have been consistently honored in past cases. In a statement to New York Timesthe bank refrained from promising to return Kandinsky’s canvas, saying only that it would consider the commission’s opinion “as part of its decision on what to do next”.
“My late parents and grandparents would be extremely happy with the decision in this case,” said Francesca Davis, granddaughter of Hedwig and Emanuel Lewenstein. Time.
She and other Lewenstein heirs were represented in the case by Mondex Corporation, a Toronto-based company that specializes in returning artwork and other cultural property taken during the Holocaust.
Mondex founder James Palmer said in a statement that the panel “has made a tremendous contribution to ensuring that the victims of National Socialism obtain justice.” The Palm team first complained for the return of the painting in 2017.
Completed in 1907, colorful life depicts dozens of colorful characters celebrating in a dreamy mountainside landscape. The canvas marked a transitional moment for Kandinsky as he moved away from figuration and increasingly embraced the type of geometric abstraction for which he is now known.
“The challenge that fascinated me above all was to create a mixture of masses, spots and lines”, the Russian artist canvas writing. “I used a ‘bird’s eye view’ to position the shapes on top of each other. In order to arrange particular areas and brushstrokes the way I wanted, I had to find a justification in terms of perspective in each case.
This is not the first time that the Lewenstein family has requested the return of a Kandinsky lost during World War II. In 2021, Amsterdam officials announced that the city would return the artist’s 1909 work painting with houses to the family, ending a years-long legal battle.
The decision led to a reform of the Dutch Restitution Committee’s policy on Nazi-looted art. The new guidelines state that “if the original owner was an individual belonging to a persecuted group, involuntary expropriation is presumed if it occurred in the Netherlands after May 10, 1940”.
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