Kandinsky Painting Returns To Market
A painting by Wassily Kandinsky returns to the market after more than 50 years. It will be on show at Christie’s Impressionist and Modern evening auction in New York on 16 November. “Rigide et courbé” (rigid and bent) (1935), which the artist painted in Paris two years after he was forced into exile from Germany, is the auction’s top lot and is estimated at $18-25 million with a guarantee. The painting was first bought in 1936 by Solomon Guggenheim directly from the artist and was included in eight exhibitions through 1949 in New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Baltimore and Charleston. When the Guggenheim Museum was looking to raise funds in 1964, the picture was among a group of 50 by the artist sold at Sotheby’s in London, raising an uproar in the New York art world. (A letter to the editor of the New York Times called it “shocking, grievous newsâ€.) The painting has remained with the same American family ever since.
