Kandinsky's Betonte Ecken: A Bauhaus Corner Piece Heads to Christie's at $60M to $80M
Wassily Kandinsky's Betonte Ecken (1922-1923), once sold by the Guggenheim for about $62,000, carries a $60 million to $80 million estimate in Christie's 20th Century Evening Sale on November 17.
On November 17, 2026, Christie's New York offers Wassily Kandinsky's Betonte Ecken (Emphasized Corners) as a leading lot in the 20th Century Evening Sale, estimated at $60 million to $80 million. The oil on canvas measures 51 1/8 by 51 1/8 inches (130 by 130 cm). Kandinsky painted it in Weimar between December 1922 and January 1923, early in his Bauhaus tenure, after completing murals for the Juryfreie Kunstschau in Berlin. Christie's says a guarantor has already committed to a bid above the artist's current auction record of 37.2 million pounds, set in 2023 for Murnau mit Kirche II, so a new Kandinsky high is all but certain.
The painting is Catalogue Raisonne number 688 (Handlist II, no. 247). Its title points to the corners: intersecting diagonals converge on a central blue form, with circles, triangles and rectangles radiating outward. Christie's and specialist writing frame it as a Gesamtkunstwerk of color, line and geometry, and as a predecessor to Komposition VIII (1923) in the Guggenheim's own collection. Provenance runs from the Schwarz collection in Berlin through Galerie Nierendorf to Hilla Rebay in 1929, then to Solomon R. Guggenheim and the Guggenheim Foundation in 1941. The museum sold it at Sotheby's London on June 30, 1964, for 22,000 pounds (about $62,000 then). It later passed through Stephen Hahn and the Bakalar collection before the present European owner acquired it at Sotheby's New York on May 13, 1986.
Recently the canvas hung in Geometric Abstraction in the Twentieth Century: Kandinsky's Universe at Museum Barberini, Potsdam (2025), and in Calder: Rever en equilibre at Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (April to August 2026). For a work that once left the Guggenheim for a mid five figure sum, Betonte Ecken returns to the block as one of the two highest published estimates of New York's November marquee week, alongside Klimt's Litzlbergkeller at the same Christie's evening.
Sources
- Wassily Kandinsky, Betonte Ecken, Christie's lot
- Kandinsky Masterpiece Headlining 20th Century Evening Sale, Christie's press, October 22, 2026
- An $80 M. Kandinsky Is Guaranteed to Beat a Record at Christie's, ARTnews
- The Guggenheim sold this painting for $62,000. Six decades on, it may fetch $80 million, CNN, November 2, 2026
- Klimt, Kandinsky and a $180 Million van Gogh, The Art Insider
- Thumbnail: Betonte Ecken, 1922-1923, image courtesy Christie's