BERLIN — An independent German commission on Tuesday recommended that a painting by Wassily Kandinsky currently owned by the Bavarian state bank be returned to the heirs of a Jewish family that originally owned the piece of art.
The commission can be called on in cases of disputes over the restitution of Nazi-confiscated cultural property, especially Jewish property.
In the case of the heirs of Hedwig Lewenstein Weyermann and Irma Lewenstein Klein versus Bayerische Landesbank, the commission advised that the 1907 painting “The Colorful Life” by Russian artist Kandinsky be returned to the heirs.
The commission’s recommendations are non-binding but are mostly followed by the parties once they have agreed to call on it to resolve the conflict.
The large tempera painting shows a group of colorfully clad people on a lawn, some eating or playing music, while others seem to be dancing.
In its conclusion, the commission says that from November 1927, the painting belonged to Hedwig and Emanuel Albert Lewenstein, a Jewish couple living in Amsterdam, and was part of their extensive art collection. The painting was auctioned off on Oct. 9, 1940 — just a few months after Germany’s Wehrmacht occupied the Netherlands — at an auction house in Amsterdam.
Before the auction, the piece had been on loan from the Lewenstein family to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, from where it was taken on Sept. 5, 1940 by order of the art dealer Abraham Mozes Querido, the commission said in a statement.
“Despite years of research,” the commission said it was unable to trace the path of the painting.
“It cannot be proven on whose initiative the painting was sold as part of the Lewenstein estate to the auction house Frederik Muller & Co. at the auction,” the commission said.
It added that the art piece was acquired by Salomon B. Slijper, whose widow sold it to Bayerische Landesbank in 1972 for 900,000 Dutch guilders. Since then, it has been on loan to the Staedtische Galerie im…
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