Wassily Kandinsky’s early oil study “Schwabing – Nikolaistrasse in Winter II” was sold at auction in London for 370,000 pounds, or about 495,000 dollars. Including commission, the final price for the buyer reached 475,000 pounds – approximately 635,000 dollars, TASS reported.
The work was offered by “Christie’s” as part of the auction for impressionist and modern art and works on paper. The painting had a preliminary estimate of between £300,000 and £500,000.
Early Munich Study
Kandinsky painted the painting in 1901, while he was working on small landscape studies in and around Munich. The work is an oil painting on cardboard measuring 23.8 by 32.3 centimetres and is signed “KANDINSKY.“ in the lower left corner.
The study depicts a street in Schwabing - a district that became a hub for artists, writers and intellectuals in the early 20th century. The work belongs to a group of small oil landscapes created by Kandinsky in the winter of 1901-1902, before the artist turned to the abstract language for which he later became famous.
The history of the painting
The work had been part of the collection of the Norwegian collector Ragnar Moltzau since at least June 1956. That same year it was shown in exhibitions in Copenhagen and Helsinki. In 1961 the painting was sold at auction in Stuttgart, after which it passed into a private collection in Hamburg and was passed down through inheritance.
At the same auctions another work by Kandinsky - – “The Blue Dome“, created in December 1938, found a buyer for 270,000 pounds. A painting by Alexei von Jawlensky, “Landscape,” was also sold for 150,000 pounds.
The sale comes on the heels of a strong week for “Christie’s” in London. “The prices achieved for Kandinsky, Mondrian and Bacon further cement London’s position as a key international market for museum masterpieces,” said Keith Gill, vice president of the auction house, as quoted by “Art Newspaper.”
Sources: weekend.rambler.ru, theartnewspaper.com