The colorful life

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The colorful life (Wassily Kandinsky)
The colorful life
Wassily Kandinsky , 1907
Tempera on canvas
130 × 162.5 cm
Lenbachhaus , Munich

The colorful life ( French La Vie mélangée ) is a painting by Wassily Kandinsky . After it was bought by the Bayerische Landesbank , the painting has been on permanent loan in the Lenbachhaus Museum in Munich since 1972 . It is considered to be one of the painter's key works. "It is a colorful hymn to Russian traditions - and thus contrasts with the contemporary striving of the Tsar and the Russian elite towards western culture." At the beginning of 2017, it became public that the Kandinsky picture belonged to the Dutch-Jewish family Lewenstein and, due to the auction at the Muller auction house in Amsterdam on October 7 or 8, 1940 after the occupation of the Netherlands by the German Wehrmacht, it could be a forced sale and thus a case of illegal Nazi-looted art . From the perspective of the heirs, the colorful life was sold under duress and pressure; from the perspective of the current owner, the colorful life was voluntarily auctioned off as part of the divorce from Robert (Bob) Lewenstein from Irma Klein. The application for restitution was brought before a US court in March 2017.

Art historical significance and description

The Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, like a whole generation of young artists, refused to see his country through the filter of a scientific and cultural thought imported from abroad. Instead, he raved about specifically Russian knowledge, unaffected by modernity. In 1889 he went on a trip to Russia to study the legal system of the ancient Syrian people in the Urals for his law studies. During this trip he fell ill with typhoid , “and ultimately the delusions of fever become the key experience, as a result of which he decided to become a painter. His picture "The Colorful Life" processes experiences from this same expedition ".

Kandinsky completed his group of colored drawings in 1907 in Paris with the painting The Colorful Life . The colorful life or the riding couple that arose during this period show how far he was still attached to Art Nouveau . In addition, the influence of folk art on Kandinsky's early work is evident ; "He saw the people in their colorful traditional costumes" walking around like colorful living pictures on two legs. "

For the art historian Kia Vahland , Das Bunte Leben is “a key work of modernism. Kandinsky shows here what constitutes human existence. A Russian matron bites into an apple, a chubby young woman searches for the notes on her flute. A bridal couple is about to kiss, a priest shows his cross, an old hiker his green beard. Young people play catch , older people prepare for battle with swords, bows and arrows. [...] A castle sits enthroned on a bold dashed mountain high above the clouds. Life shimmers, the people in the river landscape are recognizable, but dissolve when you step closer. ”Without this picture it is impossible to understand how Kandinsky“ came from his representational early work to his luminous abstractions, with which he revolutionized art history ”.

Ivan Jakowlewitsch Bilibin: Illustration to the fairy tale The Finist's Pen of the Bright Falcon

The art historian Annabell Howard sees "the splashes of color in the Russian scenes and fairy tale pictures, which are set like jewels on a dark background, or the irregular spots and contrasting pure color zones of the first Murnau landscapes and the first" improvisations "of 1908/09 already connections" to Divisionism of the Neo-Impressionists and the early paintings of the Fauves ( Matisse and Derain ):

“Especially with the bright yellow, blue and red tones that dominated Kandinsky's canvas from 1907 on, one cannot help thinking of the emphatically pure colors of the Fauves. Via the color division of the Neo-Impressionists and the technique of the Fauves, who achieved structures on the surface of the picture that were moved by color alone, the artist gradually came to the dissolution of the object. The Murnau landscapes mark an artistic new beginning, they show a lavishly colored, toy-like, lustful world, a glowing dab-like color scheme, and this romantic vision of innocence appears again and again in Kandinsky's works as a relic of a bygone Slavic fairytale world: riders, castles, lancers , Sailing boats, rainbow bridges and others. But by making color an end in itself, he was able to get the overly simple associations of these images under control. His pictures should depict a state of mind, should be manifestations of the soul. The compositions independent of representational references, initially perceived by the artist as the end point of painterly examination, soon turned out to be a new beginning, a foray on the path of emotional image discovery. "

Kandinsky made reference to the work of the painter and book illustrator Iwan Jakowlewitsch Bilibin (1872–1942) with his pictures Reitendes Paar and Das Bunte Leben ; In 1899 he created several works on the Russian fairy tale Perysko Finista Jasna-Sokola ( The Little Feather from Finist, the Clear Falcon ), which Kandinsky may have adapted as a motif. In his manuscript for Stage Composition II, Voices , which was probably created a year later between 1908 and 1909, Kandinsky took up the motifs of the picture again: the people from Bunter Leben now appear as stage characters; Kandinsky expressly refers to the model created in Sèvres .

Wassily Kandinsky: Two Maiden (1907). Musée National d'Art Moderne , Paris

According to Annegret Hoberg , for Kandinsky Das Bunte Leben was “obviously a step towards new formal means of expression.” Hans Konrad Roethel (1982), on the other hand, emphasizes the iconographic side of the work:

“From an iconographic point of view, this painting is one of Kandinsky's most important works. The title, the bright colors, the overabundance of characters, actions and events, all indicate that Kandinsky had nothing less in mind than a representation of the whole of life or - more precisely - an illustration of all secular and spiritual aspects of Russian life in Past and present."

Even if Kandinsky will form more distant from the subject in the following years, for Natascha Niemeyer-Wasserer “the content does not seem to become less important for Kandinsky.” This artistic attitude is also manifested in the poems and stage compositions that Claudia Emmert investigated, so that their conclusion is similar:

“Considered in the context of the religious-philosophical thoughts of his time, Kandinsky's work has new expressiveness. The concept of artistic 'content' therefore had to be examined. It turned out that Kandinsky did not understand the abandonment of the representational painting tradition as a renunciation of any meaningful content of his works. Rather, he had devoted his work, at least until the outbreak of the First World War, to the proclamation of eschatological hopes. "

history

Provenance

The colorful life was painted in Sevres near Paris at the beginning of 1907 and is considered the main work of Kandinsky's early work phase. After completion, the picture was in the possession of the Dutch manufacturer and art collector Emanuel Lewenstein, who died in 1930. It was given to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam for safekeeping by his family in 1938 . The colorful life was picked up on September 5, 1940 by the Jewish art dealer Querido in the Gementemusea and sold as lot no. 204 on October 8, 1940 at the Muller auction house. The circumstances of the consignment and the auction are disputed. The heirs of the Lewenstein family assume a forced sale, the owner of a voluntary consignment as part of the divorce of Irma Klein and Robert Lewenstein. The picture was acquired by the Jewish collector Sal Slijper , who died in 1971. At the same auction, in addition to the colorful life, the work Picture with Houses by Wassily Kandindky, which is now in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, was auctioned. The Restitutie Commissie spoke out in its recommendation of October 22, 2018, in which the colorful life is also discussed, against a restitution of the picture with houses.

David Röell (1945)

David Röell , the director of the Stedelijk Museum at the time , was also present at the auction ; He acquired the above-mentioned picture with houses and, with Slijper's consent, hid both Kandinskys in the museum's depot, in whose registers Das Bunte Leben continues to be the property of the Lewenstein family, as if there had been no change of ownership, probably to protect Sal Slijper. Sal Slijper loaned The Colorful Life to the Stedelijk Museum from 1957 to 1963, then to the Gemeentemuseum The Hague until 1971 .

The widow Slijper offered it for sale after his death. When the Lenbachhaus found out about this, Erika Hanfstaengl acted as acting museum director in 1972 when the Bayerische Landesbank bought the work “The Colorful Life” . The Bayerische Landesbank (BayernLB) loaned the picture to the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus after the purchase. The true origin of the work was previously unknown.

Dispute over restitution

Dutch researchers first came across the looted art auction of 1940 and the Kandinsky painting in 2004. In 2015, the descendants of the Lewenstein family contacted BayernLB to insist that the painting be published. Thereafter, the heirs' request was answered in the negative. "We do not have any legal claims with regard to the painting, in particular for its surrender," said BayernLB in a letter to the heirs at the time and refused to appeal to the Limbach Commission without any results. The head of the Lenbachhaus Matthias Mühling , in agreement with the city of Munich, advised the Landesbank, as the owner, to give the picture to the Limbach Commission for a recommendation. The case will be assessed and negotiated there from autumn 2020.

In March 2017, the heirs claimed the Kandinsky painting back in a New York district court. The picture was stolen from its rightful owners in 1940 in violation of international law, according to the lawsuit filed with the court on March 3, 2017. The descendants of the owners sued for the surrender of the picture or $ 80 million; They also accused BayernLB of having at least suspected the true origin of the work, which was valued at several million euros, when it bought the picture. BayernLB could have known that the painting had been stolen, the lawsuit said. "The purchase of the picture was organized by the Lenbachhaus, which has the ability to examine the origin of the picture and to determine whether it is likely that it was stolen by the Nazis." Thereupon the museum director Matthias Mühling said that this had happened several times - but without result. From today's perspective, this is more than unsatisfactory. The dispute attracted international attention after the Canadian art detective James Palmer went public on behalf of the Lewenstein family in March 2017.


Filmographic reference

The colorful life was presented in the Arte television series Hundred Masterpieces and their secrets . The German premiere of the program was on January 3, 2016.

literature

  • Helmut Friedel, Vivian Endicott-Barnett (ed.): The colorful life. Wassily Kandinsky in the Lenbachhaus. DuMont, Cologne 1995, ISBN 3-8321-7156-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Holly Watt: Bank's Kandinsky painting was looted by Nazis, says family . In: The Guardian . March 3, 2017 ( theguardian.com ).
  2. ↑ a b c Hundred masterpieces and their secrets fernsehserien.de.
  3. ↑ a b Svantje Karich: Looted art: The dispute over Kandinsky's main work has escalated In: Die Welt. 2017 ( welt.de ).
  4. ^ Matthias Haldemann : Kandinsky. 2016.
  5. ↑ Hildegard Möller: Painters and Muses of the "Blue Rider". 2012.
  6. ↑ The world art. Volume 62, Volume 65, 1995.
  7. ↑ a b c d e Kia Vahland : From the colorful, brown life. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . 4th March 2017.
  8. ↑ Klaus Hammer: Glowing through of colors: New illustrated books on the classics of modernism Paul Gauguin, Franz Marc and Wassily Kandinsky in Literaturkritik.de.
  9. ↑ a b c d Natascha Niemeyer-Wasserer: Kandinsky and the painting of Russian symbolism (PDF).
  10. ↑ Norbert Göttler: The Blue Rider. Rowohlt, 2008, p. 20.
  11. ↑ Painting with Houses by Wassily Kandinsky | Restitutiecommissie. Retrieved June 26, 2020 .
  12. ^ Colin Moynihan, Alison Smale : Heirs Sue for Return of a Kandinsky, Saying It Was Looted by Nazis . In: The New York Times . March 3, 2017 ( nytimes.com ).
  13. ↑ a b Heirs reclaim Kandinsky painting. In: Jüdische Allgemeine. 2017 ( juedische-allgemeine.de ).
  14. ↑ Kia Vahland: When life was still colorful. Retrieved June 26, 2020 .
  15. ↑ Suspected Nazi looted art: heirs want “The Colorful Life” back . March 4, 2017 ( faz.net ).
  16. ^ Controversy over Kandinsky paintings in: Deutschlandfunk.
  17. ↑ Swantje Karich: The dispute over Kandinsky's main work has escalated. In: www.welt.de. March 7, 2017, accessed February 22, 2020 .