Kandinsky painting Amsterdam museum returned to Jewish family sold for €60 mil.

The painting Bild mit Häusern (1909) by Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), which the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam returned to the heirs of its last Jewish owner, was sold to a private collector for over 60 million euros through a large auction house, people involved told NRC.

The proceeds of the sale will be divided between the parties involved - the two American grandchildren of the Amsterdam sewing machine manufacturer Emanuel Lewenstein, who bought the painting in 1923, and the three Dutch children of Elsa Guidotti. She was the last girlfriend of a man who lived for decades with Irma Klein, the last Jewish owner of Bild mit Häusern. Part of the proceeds will also go to Mondex, a Canadian firm specializing in looted art restitution that helped the claimants.

The sale price makes this Kandinsky the most valuable painting the Netherlands has ever restituted. Another Kandinsky, Blick auf Murnau mit Kirche, returned by the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, will be auctioned off in March. Auction house Sotheby’s expects it to sell for around 42 million euros.

Amsterdam returned Bild mit Häusern to the heirs of its last Jewish owner in February last year after a battle that lasted nine years. It initially looked like Amsterdam would keep the painting when the Restitution Committee ruled in 2018 that a thorough investigation could not show whether Irma Klein gave it up against her will in 1940. The Committee ruled that the Kandinsky was of greater importance to the museum than Klein’s heirs - the only claimants involved at the time. According to the Committee, the heirs had no “emotional or intense connection” with the painting.

Those criteria drew sharp criticism on the Dutch Restitutions Committee, prompting the government to have its restitutions policy reevaluated. In December 2020, it adjusted its policy to make it less formalistic and add more empathy to the process, including that the Restitution Committee can no longer weigh the museum’s interests against the claimants’.

Amsterdam then asked the Restitution Committee to reconsider the Kandinsky case. The heirs fought that, arguing that the new policy would automatically go in their favor.

In the summer of 2021, Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema and the city council came to the same conclusion. They announced the Stedelijk Museum would return the painting without waiting for the Restitution Committee’s advice.