Nahmad Family Consigning $60 Million Kandinsky At Christie's

(MENAFN- USA Art News) The Nahmad family, a prominent dynasty of art dealers and collectors, is consigning Betonte Ecken (1922–23), a Wassily Kandinsky painting, for sale at Christie's New York on November 17. The artwork is estimated to fetch between $60 million and $80 million, making it the highest-priced lot in Christie's November sales, as reported by ARTnews.

This colorful abstraction, measuring just over four feet square, was painted by Kandinsky in Weimar, Germany, during his tenure at the Bauhaus. The work comes with a third-party guarantee, which Christie's indicates will ensure it surpasses the artist's current auction record of $44.8 million. That record was set by Murnau mit Kirche II (1910) at Sotheby's London in 2023.

The Nahmad family's collection is reputed to include as many as 5,000 artworks, valued at over $4 billion. They are also recognized as the largest private collectors of Pablo Picasso's works outside of the Picasso family. Exhibition catalogs over the past 25 years, including Art of Tomorrow: Hilla Rebay and Solomon R. Guggenheim (2005) and the Museum Barberini's Geometric Abstraction in the Twentieth Century: Kandinsky's Universe (2025), have listed the Nahmad Collection as the owner of Betonte Ecken.

According to ARTnews' Brian Boucher, the painting has changed hands multiple times. Its provenance shows it first appeared at auction in 1926 at the Jacob Hecht Auction House in Berlin, from the Schwarz collection. It then went to Berlin's Galerie Nierendorf, which likely sold it in 1929 to Hilla Rebay, an advisor to museum founder Solomon R. Guggenheim and an early advocate for abstract art in the US. Guggenheim later acquired the painting from Rebay, and it remained in the Guggenheim Museum's collection until 1964. That year, the museum sold it at Sotheby's London to New York art dealer Stephen Hahn. Hahn subsequently sold it to Boston collectors Sandra and David Bakalar, who offered it at a Sotheby's auction in 1986, when it was acquired by the current owner, now identified as the Nahmad family. Christie's declined to comment on the matter, and the Nahmads did not respond by press time.

We previously reported:

A Wassily Kandinsky painting, Betonte Ecken (1922–23), with a $60 million to $80 million estimate, is set for auction at Christie's New York.

Source: ARTnews

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