By Claire Moses – Oct. 15, 2026
A painting by the Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky that was looted by the Nazis has sold at an auction for more than 31.5 million pounds (nearly $42 million). The work, “The Colorful Life,” spent decades in a German museum before it was returned to the family that owned it until 1940, opening the way for a private sale…
Experts consider the painting, from 1907, an important marker in Kandinsky’s journey from figurative painter to abstract artist…
Before World War II, “The Colorful Life” was part of the collection of a Dutch Jewish industrialist who ran a sewing machine factory, Emanuel Lewenstein, and his wife, Hedwig Lewenstein Weyermann…
Bayern LB returned the painting to the heirs in 2023 after the German government’s advisory commission on Nazi-looted art recommended it do so.
The commission said at the time that, whether through sales or confiscation, art losses experienced by people from persecuted groups in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands should be assumed to have been involuntary unless there is clear evidence to the contrary.
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