Looted Kandinsky painting Das bunte Leben sells for 31.9 million euros in London

The sale

Christie's sold Wassily Kandinsky's painting Das bunte Leben (The Colourful Life) at its London auction in October 2026 for 31,914,000 euros, according to Het Parool. The auction house had estimated the work at between 21 and 30 million euros. Bids were placed both by phone and online, and the price rose from 13 million to above 20 million in a very short time. Other outlets reported different figures: NOS gave 27 million pounds (almost 32 million euros), while VRT NWS and De Morgen reported more than 31 million pounds (more than 37 million euros). According to De Morgen, the auction house announced the result in a press release.

Family and collection

Het Parool names the owner as Emanuel Albert Lewenstein (1870-1930), director of a sewing machine company in Amsterdam, who built a collection in the 1920s that included works by Kandinsky, Van Gogh, Renoir and Manet. Volkskrant names the parents as Robert Lewenstein and Irma Klein, who fled to the United States in 1940. The family lost nearly the entire collection during the war, apart from one Rembrandt etching. Heirs today include American Rob Lewenstein, his sister and several Dutch heirs, according to Volkskrant.

A painting lost in the war

NOS reports that Kandinsky made the work in Paris in 1907, and that the Lewenstein couple bought it in 1927. After German occupation began in October 1940, the family's collection was confiscated, according to VRT NWS and Trouw. Researchers cited by NOS point to numerous signs that the Nazis seized the painting. A museum employee reportedly had it taken by courier to an auction house in Amsterdam on the instructions of an unknown person, and Het Parool says the arrangement involved Nazi-era art dealer Alois Miedl. The work was offered at the Frederik Muller & Co. auction in 1940 and came into the hands of art collector Sal Slijper.

1. 1907Kandinsky makes the painting in Paris
2. 1927Emanuel and Hedwig Lewenstein buy the painting
3. 1940Work offered at a Frederik Muller & Co. auction in Amsterdam
4. 1972Slijper's widow sells the work to Bayerische Landesbank
5. 2023Restitution committee rules the painting must go back to the Lewenstein heirs
6. 2026-10Christie's London auction sells the painting for 31.9 million euros according to Het Parool

After Slijper's death in 1971, his widow sold the painting in 1972 to the Bayerische Landesbank, which loaned it to the Lenbachhaus museum in Munich. It hung there for more than 50 years before the restitution process began.

Restitution and the heirs

The German restitution committee Beratende Kommission NS-Raubgut ruled in 2023 that the Bayerische Landesbank had to return the painting to the Lewenstein heirs, according to Het Parool. VRT NWS reports the bank handed it back to the heirs that same year. In August, Rob Lewenstein told Het Parool that the new owner was a Middle Eastern billionaire unknown to him, according to Volkskrant.

The heirs had earlier recovered a different Kandinsky, Bild mit Haeusern from 1909, which had been in the collection of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. The restitution committee ruled in 2018 that the municipality was not obliged to return it, but Amsterdam decided to give it back in 2021 after a report by the Kohnstamm Committee. NOS reports the painting hung at the Stedelijk until February 2022, and Volkskrant reports the heirs sold it in 2023 for more than 60 million euros.

Same sale

Trouw reports that a Piet Mondrian work, Compositie III, went under the hammer for the first time at the same sale and brought in about 29.8 million euros.