Some 15 years after Solomon R. Guggenheim died, the foundation managing his extensive art collection concluded that it owned more Wassily Kandinsky paintings than it knew what to do with.
The late American businessman had been among the Russian painter’s most prominent and dedicated patrons.
But in 1964, despite operating its namesake museum in Manhattan, Guggenheim’s foundation placed 50 of its 170 Kandinsky works — characteristically colorful, geometric takes on abstraction — on sale “for want of space,” according to CNN.
Announcing the decision, his nephew, Harry F Guggenheim, said trustees feared the art would otherwise remain hidden away “in our vaults,” according to reports at the time. “We have concluded that this should not be the fate of these paintings,” he added.
It was a noble sentiment but perhaps, in hindsight, a costly one.
At a London auction later that year, the 50 paintings fetched a combined £536,580, then equivalent to around $1.5 million.
Many of them have since reappeared on the market at significantly higher prices.
And now one of the works — “Betonte Ecken,” which in 1964 attracted a winning bid of just £22,000 (then around $62,000, or $540,000 in today’s money) from a New York art dealer — is returning to auction with an estimate of $60 million to $80 million.
“The Guggenheim had such an embarrassment of riches back then,” said Max Carter, global chairman of 20th and 21st century art at Christie’s, the auction house behind this month’s sale.
The foundation “sold tremendous masterpieces, which would be unthinkable to sell today,” he added, speaking over the phone from New York.
“Betonte Ecken” is not just poised to break the auction record for Kandinsky’s work — it is certain to do so. Christie’s said a guarantor has confirmed an offer exceeding the record £37.2 million ($44.55 million) paid for his painting “Murnau mit Kirche II” in 2023.
The dramatic appreciation in the value of Kandinsky’s work is a testament to his status in today’s art market. While his reputation was well-established by the time of the Guggenheim sale (at which point he had already been dead for two decades), “Betonte Ecken” was, then, “still very forward-looking,” Carter said.
“Now it’s become canonical,” he added, calling the painting “quintessential” Kandinsky.
“If you were to go on the street and ask the first 10 people who’d heard of Kandinsky to close their eyes and describe what one of his masterpieces looked like, it would be this.”
