Kandinsky’s Das bunte Leben at Christie’s London Auction

Christie’s will offer Wassily Kandinsky’s restituted 1907 painting Das bunte Leben in London on October 14, returning a work displayed in Munich for roughly half a century to the auction market. The sale is confirmed; the precise restitution date is not. Christie’s says June 2023, but the official chronology shows a recommendation that June and the owner’s decision to return the painting in July.

 
 

Kandinsky’s Das bunte Leben Heads to London

A September 1 announcement from Christie’s places the painting in its 20th/21st Century: London Evening Sale on October 14, 2026. The auction house will show it in Zurich from September 2 to 4, Paris from September 10 to 12, New York from September 17 to 20, Hong Kong from September 22 to 29, and London from October 8. Dpa independently confirmed the sale date with a Christie’s spokesperson.

Christie’s has not posted a public estimate. Keith Gill, the house’s vice chairman of 20th and 21st century art, told Artnet News that the house expects more than $30 million. A relevant public benchmark is another restituted Kandinsky: Murnau mit Kirche II sold for £37,196,800 at Sotheby’s in 2023, setting an auction record for the artist. That comparison describes the market context, not the likely October result.

The 130-by-163-centimeter tempera on canvas is still populated by recognizable figures: pilgrims, a mounted knight, a mother and child, musicians, and people at prayer inhabit a dark landscape punctuated by intense spots of color. Guggenheim teaching materials describe the viewpoint as slightly elevated and note that the rider, couple, rower, and Kremlin-like city recur in Kandinsky’s later work. The painting is therefore important not because it is already abstract, but because color and pictorial rhythm are beginning to compete with narrative description.

Its 1907 date also places it four years before the founding of Der Blaue Reiter, the Munich circle with which Wassily Kandinsky is most closely associated. Christie’s says the artist made the work during his Paris period and exhibited it at the 1907 Salon d’Automne. At the time it was his largest canvas, giving the crowded, bird’s-eye composition the scale of a public statement rather than a private experiment.

 

Das bunte Leben (1907) by Wassily Kandinsky; reproduction by Ermell, via Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain Mark 1.0; cropped.

 
 

The Official Provenance Is Less Linear Than the Sale Narrative

The most detailed public record is the German Advisory Commission’s 13-page recommendation. It supports restitution, but it also preserves gaps that a short auction-house provenance necessarily compresses.

Date	Recorded event
November 1927	Emanuel and Hedwig Lewenstein acquire the painting for 900 Dutch guilders.
1933	Hedwig lends it to Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum.
September 5, 1940	The museum releases it to a messenger sent by dealer Abraham Mozes Querido for an unnamed party.
October 9, 1940	Frederik Muller & Co sells it for 250 guilders, plus commission, to Salomon B. Slijper.
1972	Slijper’s widow sells it to Bayerische Landesbank for 900,000 guilders.
2023	The commission recommends restitution; the bank later agrees to return it.
October 14, 2026	Christie’s scheduled London auction.

The 1940 transaction did not produce a clean documentary break. According to the commission, Slijper sent the painting straight back to the Stedelijk after the auction. The museum continued to list it as a Lewenstein loan while holding it for Slijper, probably until January 1946. The commission also found that Slijper tried to sell the work in 1946 while acting as an intermediary rather than as its owner. These details do not reverse the commission’s conclusion, but they explain why a name-by-name chain of custody is not the same as proof of an orderly transfer of title.

Christie’s dates the long-term Lenbachhaus loan to 1973. The commission says the painting had been on loan there since the bank’s 1972 acquisition, without separating the purchase from its physical placement. The accounts differ by one year. Bayerische Landesbank owned the painting while Munich’s municipal museum displayed it, turning a bank asset into a familiar part of the city’s exceptional Kandinsky holdings.

 
 

June 2023 Was a Recommendation, Not a Completed Return

Christie’s repeatedly describes Das bunte Leben as having been restituted in June 2023. The official record does not support June as the date of a completed return. The Advisory Commission decided on May 16 to recommend restitution and published that recommendation on June 13. It was a nonbinding recommendation, not a court judgment or transfer instrument.

The next documented step came more than a month later. A Bayerische Landesbank spokesperson told dpa that the bank had decided on July 24 to follow the recommendation and give the painting to the Lewenstein heirs; dpa’s report, updated July 25, added that the details of the restitution had not yet been fixed. June therefore marks the recommendation, July marks the owner’s decision, and neither source establishes the later date on which possession or title actually passed.

That distinction does not weaken the restitution. The commission found numerous indicators of a loss caused by Nazi persecution and said the bank had not rebutted the presumption that applied after Germany occupied the Netherlands. Bayerische Landesbank subsequently accepted the recommended outcome. The current seller’s authority follows from the completed transfer, not merely from the commission’s advice.

The Lenbachhaus in Munich, photographed by Schlaier in 2009, via Wikimedia Commons. Released into the public domain.

 
 

The Auction Does Not Close the 1940 Provenance File

Christie’s says the family’s assets were confiscated after the German occupation and that works from the collection were dispersed in October 1940. The commission’s conclusion is compatible with a persecution-related loss, but its evidence does not identify who instructed the Stedelijk to release Das bunte Leben, who consigned it to Frederik Muller & Co, or who received the proceeds. It also could not determine with certainty whether Hedwig’s son Robert, daughter Wilhelmine, or both inherited the painting after her death. That inheritance question did not defeat the claim because every eligible heir was represented in the proceeding.

The commission also declined to decide whether 250 guilders was an adequate 1940 price, finding that the point was unnecessary once the involuntary-loss presumption applied. The documented comparison is nonetheless stark: the work cost the Lewensteins 900 guilders in 1927, sold for 250 plus commission in occupied Amsterdam, and cost the Bavarian bank 900,000 guilders in 1972. Those figures are nominal and should not be treated as inflation-adjusted equivalents; their value lies in showing the transactions the archive can actually document.

The October auction will establish a new price and a new owner if the lot sells. It will not identify the 1940 consignor, locate the missing proceeds, or guarantee future public access. Christie’s has announced exhibition dates before the sale, but no buyer or post-sale destination can be known in advance.

The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, photographed by Aarnout2007, via Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

 
 

The Sale Is Set; the Provenance Gaps Remain

The evidence now establishes four points:

• Christie’s has scheduled Das bunte Leben for its London evening sale on October 14, with no public estimate posted.
• The German Advisory Commission concluded that the 1940 loss was linked to Nazi persecution, and Bayerische Landesbank later agreed to restitution.
• June 2023 is the recommendation month, not a completed-return date supported by the public record; the bank’s decision followed on July 24.
• The person who ordered the 1940 consignment, the recipient of the proceeds, the exact completion date of restitution, and the painting’s destination after October remain unknown.