About 15 years after the death of American businessman Solomon R. Guggenheim, the foundation that manages his art collection decided to sell 50 out of 170 paintings by the Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky, despite his status as one of the most prominent artists supported by the Guggenheim.
In 1964, the foundation, which runs the Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan, justified the decision by saying “there was not enough space to display it.” Guggenheim's nephew, Harry F., explained: Guggenheim said that the foundation’s trustees feared that the paintings would remain locked in storage, adding: “We decided that this should not be the fate of these paintings.”
The decision seemed noble at the time, but it may have cost the institution a huge artistic fortune.
At an auction held in London in the same year, the fifty paintings were sold for about $1.5 million at the time. Since then, many of their works have returned to the market at much higher prices. Today, the painting “Betonte Ecken” is preparing to return to auction, with estimates ranging between 60 and 80 million dollars, after it was sold in 1964 for about 62 thousand dollars at the time.
“The Guggenheim Foundation had enormous artistic wealth at the time,” said Max Carter, global head of 20th and 21st Century Art at Christie’s, which is organizing the auction, adding that the institution “sold extraordinary masterpieces, something that is unimaginable today.”
It has become almost certain that the painting "Betonte Ecken" will break the record for Kandinsky's works at auctions, after a guarantor confirmed receiving an offer exceeding the current record of $44.55 million, which is the amount for which his painting "Murnau mit Kirche II" was sold in 2023.
This significant increase in the value of Kandinsky's works reflects his position in today's art market. Despite his well-established artistic reputation at the time of the Guggenheim sale, “Betonte Ecken” was still “largely ahead of its time,” according to Carter.
He added: “Today, it has become a reference work of art,” describing it as a perfect embodiment of the artist’s style.
“If you asked the first 10 people on the street who knew Kandinsky to close their eyes and imagine what one of his masterpieces looked like, this would be what they imagine,” Carter said.
Kandinsky was one of the most prominent pioneers of abstract art in the second decade of the 20th century. "Betonte Ecken" was painted between December 1922 and January 1923, during an important phase of his artistic career, which witnessed the creation of some of his most sought-after works in the art market.
After seven years in Russia, he returned to Germany, where he lived before the outbreak of World War I. With his artistic orientations conflicting with the anti-bourgeois ideology of the new Soviet regime, he accepted an invitation to teach artistic theories at the famous Bauhaus school in Weimar. Later, the Nazis described him as a degenerate artist.
The painting, which he completed shortly after his arrival in Germany, embodies his theoretical interest in shapes and geometry. Carter said that its complexity, colors and composition “encapsulate everything that came before it,” adding that some art collectors see this stage as the most important in his career.
The painting also bears the imprint of the clear musical influence in Kandinsky's work. He chose to pursue art professionally after attending a concert of Wagner's works at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow in 1896. He later described the experience as follows: "I saw all my colors in my mind, as if they were standing before my eyes. Wild, almost crazy lines were drawn in front of me."
The painting includes black lines that resemble musical note notations, and has a “symphonic” character in a broader sense, according to Carter, who explains that the secret of its cohesion lies in the harmony between its disparate elements.
He said: “When you stand in front of this painting, you find that the relationship between the shapes and the various elements in it, which may appear chaotic, scattered and perhaps unconnected if drawn by a less skilled artist, is characterized by extreme harmony,” adding that “it is basically related to the relationships that link the shapes to each other.”
The side length of the square painting is more than 1.3 metres, which is a relatively large size in Kandinsky's works. The scarcity of his artistic production also contributed to the high value of his works. One of the comprehensive indexes of his works includes less than 1,200 oil paintings, compared to more than 16,000 paintings and drawings in one of the indexes of Pablo Picasso’s works.
Many art institutions still hold Kandinsky's works, including the Guggenheim Museum itself, which today includes more than 150 of his paintings, after acquiring new works since the 1964 auction. Although the institution may have lost masterpieces worth millions of dollars today by selling these paintings, it preserved the artist's most prominent works, including his famous painting "Komposition VIII."
Guggenheim's nephew had made it clear before the 1964 auction that the foundation only offered for sale paintings that could be "reasonably dispensed with, without prejudice to the status of the museum's permanent collection."
