A prized painting by Russian master Wassily Kandinsky was sold under duress during the Second World War, having been returned to the descendants of its former Jewish owners.
Oil paintings, Bild mit Häusern (Painting with houses), is just one of a precious art collection inherited by Robert Lewenstein and his wife Irma Klein that, at one point, also included works by Van Gogh, Renoir and Rembrandt. But the pair were forced to auction off Kandinsky’s painting in October 1940 as they fled the Nazis five months after they invaded the Netherlands.
Records show that the director of Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum bought Kandinsky for a fraction of its value at the time. Het Parool report: “He paid 160 guilders for it – a fraction of its original value at the time, 2000 to 3000 guilders.”
The 1909 painting of a figure in an abstract, colorful landscape is now worth an estimated $20 million.
Its transfer to Lewenstein’s heirs on Monday put an end to a nine-year dispute.
“As a city, we have a great responsibility to deal with the indescribable suffering and injustice inflicted on the Jews during the Second World War,” said Deputy Mayor Amsterdam Touria Meliani said in a declare.
“To the extent that anything can be restored, we as a society have a moral obligation to act accordingly. This certainly applies to many works of art that are proprietary. owned by Jewish citizens and either looted by the Nazis or lost to their owners,” added Meliani.
The initial attempt to retrieve multi-million dollar artwork was rejected by the Dutch Institutions Commission in 2018, following a five-year investigation. Commission to regulate cases of ownership of looted artifacts during the Nazi occupation
A decisive appeal in 2020 was also unsuccessful. But a year later, a second commission, set up by the Dutch government, ruled to re-evaluate the case. That led to new negotiations between the Lewenstein heirs and the autonomous region.
“The municipality and its heirs agree that reparation does justice to the principle of return of works of art that were unintentionally expropriated during the Second World War due to circumstances involving directly related to the Nazi regime to the heirs of the then-owner if possible,” the museum said on Monday.
James Palmer’s Mondex Corporationsupport for the compensation negotiations, adding, “Today marks the beginning of a new chapter in the Lewenstein family’s journey to achieve the justice, dignity and respect they have sought. legally for many years.”
