Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky’s Le Rond Rouge (1939) will headline Christie’s forthcoming 20th and 21st century evening sale in London, which is scheduled to take place on March 5th.
The abstract work was in the artist’s collection until his passing in 1944, at which point it passed to his widow, Nina Kandinsky. It is estimated to fetch between £10.5 million–£15.5 million ($14.3 million–$21.1 million).
Kandinsky painted Le Rond Rouge in the spring of 1939 during his years in Paris. The artist moved to the city in late 1933 after the Nazi government closed the Bauhaus school in Berlin where he had been teaching. It was during his time in the French capital that he developed a new visual vocabulary that incorporated more pastels and biomorphic forms. The painting is composed of geometric and sinuous forms that seem to be radiating energy from within. It was first exhibited at a solo presentation of the artist’s work in the spring of 1946 at the Galerie René Drouin in Paris. It was also shown during Kandinsky’s memorial exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in the winter of 1947–1948.
The sale is part of a week of auctions taking place across major London auction houses during the first week of March.
Also included in the 20th and 21st century sale is Claude Monet’s Le Parc Monceau (1878), which carries an estimate of £5.5 million–£8.5 million ($7.49 million–$11.6 million). The work has not been seen publicly since 2007, when it was acquired at Christie’s.
In the painting, Monet plays with the contrast of light and shadow in a way that came to define his Impressionist work of the 1870s. It is one of three tableaux of the park in Paris’s 8th arrondissement painted by the French artist, who completed three other views two years earlier. Two of the paintings from the series are part of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection.
Also featured in the sale is Henry Moore’s King and Queen (1952-53), which carries an estimate of £10 million–£15 million ($13.65 million–$27.29 million). The sculpture is making its auction debut after being held in the same British private collection for more than seven decades.
