Bild mit weissen linien (Painting with white lines) was one of the largest and most colourful works produced by the artist in his celebrated series of paintings made during this crucial year in the development of abstraction.
Offered at the auction last night (June 21), the 3ft 11 x 3ft 7in (1.2 by 1.1m) oil on canvas drew a prolonged competition between three bidders - two parties on telephone and art advisor Hugo Nathan who was sitting in the ninth row of the saleroom and bidding for a European client.
With the bidding opening at £23m, it rose in increments of £100,000 although jumps of £400,000 were twice made by Nathan before he seemingly dropped out at £28m. With the two phone bidders continuing to carry the price upwards but the competition eventually beginning to stall, Nathan then surprised onlookers at the auction by jumping back into contention and winning the lot at £29m.
The price was a record for the artist at auction and a round of applause broke out in the saleroom as the gavel came down.
The picture came fresh to the market having been bought by the German businessman and collector Wilhelm Hack in 1974 and then descending to the vendor. The auctioneers had arranged an ‘irrevocable bid’ before the sale, meaning that a minimum price was already guaranteed by a third party in return for a share of any additional proceeds.
The sum fetched represented the second auction record for Kandinsky at the Sotheby’s sale. Only six lots earlier, the earlier 1909 oil on board Murnau - landschaft mit grünem haus (Murnau - landscape with green house) sold at £18.5m against a £15m-25m estimate.
‘Murnau - landschaft mit grünem haus’ (Murnau - landscape with green house) by Wassily Kandinsky that sold at Sotheby’s for £18.5m. The price had set an auction record for the artist before it was broken again six lots later by ‘Bild mit weissen linien’ (Painting with white lines).
Sotheby’s 23-lot Impressionist & Modern evening sale had directly followed a 35-lot ‘curated’ sale of small-sized works. The sale was called ‘Actual Size’ since all the works were no bigger than the size of the catalogue page on which they were illustrated in their actual dimensions.
The combined total of the two auctions was £148.9m (including premium) which was above the £103.3m generated at the equivalent single event last year, although the 2016 sale offered only 27 lots.
Meanwhile, Christie’s will offer a further test of the market at its Impressionist & Modern sale taking place next week on June 27. Among the star lots is Max Beckmann’s (1884-1950) Hölle der Vögel (Bird’s Hell) from 1938, which is estimated ‘in the region of’ £30 million.
