Looted Kandinsky work restored to Jewish heirs fetches $45M

By JILL LAWLESS
Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — A painting by Wassily Kandinsky that spent decades in a Dutch museum after its Jewish owner was murdered in the Holocaust has sold at auction for 37.2 million pounds ($44.9 million). “Murnau with Church II“ set a record price for the Russian artist in a sale at Sotheby’s in London on Wednesday evening. The Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven returned the painting last year to the descendants of German Jewish art collectors Johanna Margarete Stern and Siegbert Samuel Stern. Sotheby’s said proceeds from the sale will be shared between 13 surviving Stern heirs and will also fund further research into the fate of the family’s collection.