At Sotheby's in London on Wednesday night, a recently restored 1910 painting by Wassily Kandinsky sold in a single offer for a record $44.9 million, Scott Reyburn reported in the New York Times.
The vibrantly colored piece, “Murnau With Church II”, was in the collection of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, but last September it was returned to Johanna Margarete Stern and Siegbert's heirs. Samuel Stern, Jewish collectors in Berlin who owned the work in the 1930s, before it was seized by the Nazis. She was murdered at Auschwitz; he died of natural causes in 1935. Proceeds will go to his 13 living descendants, with some funds being used to track other works that were once in the Stern collection.
One of the pioneers of abstract art, Wassily Kandinsky paved the way for succeeding artists in this artistic field. His paintings have been described as "visual music", as through color and line he expressed how music made him feel. Fascinated by the association between color and music, he even composed music for his works. The artist sought to provoke an emotional response in the viewer without the constraining influence of defined objects and physical boundaries.