Kandinsky painting seized by Nazis from Jews sold for $42 million

A painting by Wassily Kandinsky, seized by the Nazis from a Jewish family during the Holocaust, has been sold at Christie's auction house in London for more than £31.5 million (about $42 million). The painting was held in a Munich museum for around five decades before being returned to the heirs of the Jewish Lowenstein family. The work, titled "Das bunte Leben" (The Colorful Life), was the subject of a lengthy legal dispute. The bidding lasted about six minutes, and the final price far exceeded pre-sale estimates of $24-33 million. The buyer's identity has not been disclosed. The 1907 painting is considered a milestone in Kandinsky's transition from figurative to abstract art. Before the war, the painting was part of the collection of Emanuel Lowenstein, a Dutch Jewish industrialist. In October 1940, the collection was sold at an auction in Amsterdam. In 1972, the German bank BayernLB purchased the painting and transferred it to a museum in Munich. In 2023, the heirs filed a lawsuit, and the painting was returned by a decision of the German government commission on looted art.