Van Gogh, Kandinsky, Manet and even Rodin… Several masterpieces for sale at a prestigious art fair in the Netherlands

The Tefaf (The European Fine Art Fair) in Maastricht opens this weekend. All works presented are offered for sale. Among them, many exceptional pieces, but two of them should attract all eyes until March 14.

One of the rare early paintings by Vincent Van Gogh and a masterpiece by Wassily Kandinsky, pioneer of abstract art, are up for sale. Tefaf, a veritable treasure mine located in Maastricht, in the south of the country, should allow visitors to marvel at paintings, sculptures and jewelry.

Manet, Rubens and Rodin are also among the many pieces on display, all of which will be on sale. But the star works of this event this year are the paintings: Head of a peasant woman with a white headdress by the Dutch painter Van Gogh and Murnau mit Kirche II by Kandinsky, which was sold for 41.9 million euros at auction in London in March 2023.

“A star at the fair”

Van Gogh’s early work, painted around 1884, was put up for sale by MS Rau, one of the largest and best-known galleries in the United States, located in New Orleans. “Van Gogh is an incredibly timeless artist“, observes Rebecca Rau, vice-president of acquisitions at the gallery. “There will definitely be a lot of interest” from buyers.

Van Gogh created this painting while living with his parents in the town of Nuenen in the south of the Netherlands. In 1885, he painted his famous painting in the same place The Potato Eaters.

The asking price for his painting, put on sale Thursday, reached 4.5 million euros, said the president of the gallery, Bill Rau. “We knew it would be a star at the fair“, did he declare. “But we had no idea how excited people would be just passing by” in front of this painting.

The other “star” of the fair is the painting Murnau mit Kirche II by the painter Vassily Kandinsky, born in Moscow. The painting was recently recovered by the heirs of its owner, a German Jew killed by the Nazis. This oil on canvas of approximately one meter by one meter, painted in 1910, at a pivotal moment in the painter’s work, offers a colorful vision of the German village of Murnau, its pointed roofs and the spire of its church, stretched all like the peaks of the Bavarian Alps.

It long adorned the dining room of Johanna Margarete and Siegbert Stern, founders of a successful textile company. This couple at the heart of Berlin cultural life in the 1920s, who frequented Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka and Albert Einstein, had built up an impressive collection of around a hundred paintings and drawings. Siegbert Stern died of natural causes in 1935. His wife Johanna Margarette, who had fled Nazi Germany for the Netherlands, died at Auschwitz in May 1944.

Murnau Mit Kirche II was identified only ten years ago in a museum in the Dutch city of Eindhoven, where it had been since 1951. It was returned in 2022 to the heirs of the Sterns, whose thirteen survivors shared the proceeds of the sale .

100 million euros

The painting was purchased at auction last year by art dealer Robert Landau, who did not wish to disclose the sale price to Tefaf. He said, however, that the painting had recently been valued at “100 million euros“.

“But I have nothing to say about the price. The world knows how much we paid for it and we will only sell it to someone we value and who will keep it somewhere nice“, he said.

Both paintings may not be on public display in the near future if they are acquired by private art collectors. But according to Rebecca Rau, most of the masterpieces presented at the fair “will probably end up in a museum“.