BY DAVID ROSENSTEIN

Wassily Kandinsky’s Das bunte Leben sold for £31.56 million at Christie’s in London, making a spectacular return to the market for a painting that captures the artist on the road to abstraction. The 1907 work was the highest-value lot in the auction house’s October 14 evening sales. Its price includes buyer’s premium.

Pilgrims, peasants, mothers and children populate a landscape alive with colour. Kandinsky drew on Russian folklore and religious imagery, while absorbing the experimental painting he encountered in France. The result has the sweep of an imaginary world: its many figures invite the eye to wander, while patches of vivid colour begin to take on a life beyond the people and places they describe.

A Turning Point in Modern Painting

At roughly 130 by 163 centimetres, Das bunte Leben was Kandinsky’s largest canvas to date. Exhibited at the Paris Salon d’Automne in 1907, it belongs to the formative years before his decisive move towards abstraction. Its importance lies partly in that threshold: recognisable subjects remain, yet colour increasingly supplies the emotional force of the painting.

The sale also followed a landmark restitution. Acquired by Emanuel Albert Lewenstein and Hedwig Lewenstein-Weyermann in 1927, the work was dispersed during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. It was returned to Hedwig’s heirs in June 2023. That history gives the auction a significance beyond its headline price, connecting a major work of modern art with the recovery of a family’s collection.

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