A new Kandinsky's lot at Sotheby's for 3,000,000-5,000,000 GBP (UPD: sold for 5,3000,000 GBP)

13/06/2018

On June 19, 2018, in London, the next Evening Sale held by Sotheby's auction house will take place. 36 lots are to be presented there, whereof sixteen have more than 1 mln pounds estimates. The most expensive lot is, of course, Picasso: a portrait of his muse Maria Theresa Walter is estimated by experts at about ?45 million. Among the favorites, there are also impressionists (Monet, Pissarro), two bronze sculptures by Giacometti, one wonderful storyteller Miro and even a charcoal drawing by Matisse himself.

As for Kandinsky's lot, this is a canvas of 1910 depicting Gabriel M?nter, a German artist who was in a love and creative relationship with Kandinsky for almost 15 years. She is standing behind the easel and painting a Bavarian landscape from life. The picture is called accordingly: Gabriele M?nter painting outdoors in front of an easel.

Kandinsky rarely painted portraits, even of his friends and family. There are no more than ten portraits of the same M?nter made by him; which makes each of them more valuable. Sotheby's estimates this work at 3 to 5 million pounds, which, if the sale is successful, will make it one of the most expensive paintings of the artist.

The work is especially valuable because Kandinsky painted it during his transitional period, when he, absorbing everything new and carefully looking for his own artistic language, came very close to the discovery of abstraction. Behind this well-recognizable fauvist-expressionistic manner of the artist, the subject is almost invisible, the space is very conditional, and the color, having got rid of its descriptive function, assumes the main role in the work.



Inspired by the scenery of the picturesque town of Murnau, where he and M?nter spent a lot of time together and even bought a house there, Kandinsky was persistently and consistently looking for his own way in painting during those years. The evolution of the search reflected on his canvases is supported by a powerful theoretical base recorded, in particular, in the book Point and Line to Plane.

UPD: Sold June 19, 2018 at Sotheby's London for ?5,3 million pounds