Unseen Mondrian and restituted Kandinsky reach the October saleroom
A Piet Mondrian painting unseen in public for 25 years will go under the hammer in London on 14 October with an estimate of £20m-£30m.
Composition III (1920) is listed for the 20th/21st Century: London Evening Sale at Christie's in London. It will be the painting's auction debut, according to The Art Newspaper. Christie's states the range is the highest estimate for a Mondrian at auction in Europe since 2009.
The work dates from an early and scarce moment. Mondrian made eight major paintings in 1920, and five are now in museum collections including Tate in London, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. The London canvas was previously owned by architect-collector Armand P. Bartos and his wife Celeste. An estimate, the price range an auction house publishes before a sale, is not a sale price.
The same evening sale includes Wassily Kandinsky's Das bunte Leben (1907), translated as "The Colorful Life", with an estimate in excess of US$30m. The painting was acquired in 1927 by Emanuel Albert Lewenstein and Hedwig Lewenstein-Weyermann.
Its provenance, the documented chain of ownership, spans war, sale and a long museum loan. It was removed from loan at the Stedelijk and sold at auction in October 1940, bought by Salomon B. Slijper and later acquired by Bayerische Landesbank from Slijper's family in 1972. It was then on long-term loan to the Lenbachhaus in Munich from 1973 for more than 50 years. The Lewenstein heirs sued the bank in 2017 and secured restitution, the return of a work taken under duress or theft, in June 2023, according to The Art Newspaper.
A week later in New York, antiquity takes centre stage. A marble torso of a Roman emperor from the Julio-Claudian period, first half of the first century AD, is listed for Sotheby's Magnum Opus Evening Auction in New York on 21 October with an estimate of US$8m-US$12m.
The torso leads a sale of more than 900 works from an anonymous private collection. It is thought to depict Augustus, Tiberius or Claudius. The same object was last offered at Sotheby's in New York in 2010 with an US$800,000-US$1.2m estimate and sold for US$7.36m with fees, the total paid including the buyer's premium on top of the hammer price.
What makes this stand out for anyone who likes to look is access. One painting has been out of view for a generation. One returns to market after a restitution claim. One ancient fragment returns after 16 years away. October will decide who holds them next.
