Painter, music-lover, teacher, art theorist and founder of abstract art, Wassily KANDINSKY succeeded in revealing painting, freeing it from objects in order to achieve an immaterial art. The title of his first conceptual work on abstract art – “Concerning the spiritual in art and painting in particular” – has painting elevated to a metaphysical level by the sheer expressive force of shapes and colours. For Kandinsky, paintings have the same direct appeal to the soul as music (he was an admirer and later a friend of Arnold Schönberg). The current multi-venue retrospective exhibition devoted to his work shows that Kandinsky’s work has lost nothing of its stimulative power. After showing at Munich’s Städtische galerie im Lembachhaus and before moving to New York’s Guggenheim Museum (autumn 2009) the homage to Wassily Kandinsky will spend the spring and summer months at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (8 April - 10 August 2009).

Kandinsky’s key works make regular appearances at London and New York auction sales where, alone, they generate 87% of the artist’s annual auction revenue. New York holds the top records for Kandinsky’s work with two sales above the $10m line, the first in May 1990, at the peak of the last speculative bubble and the second in November 2008, just as the art market was tumbling. In effect, on 6 November 2008 in New York, Christie’s presented Studie zu Improvisation 3, a painting from 1909 that stands on the cusp of Kandinsky’s historical passage from figurative to abstract work. The painting fetched $15m, the artist’s second-best ever auction result behind Fugue, a huge painting from 1914 which sold for $19m in 1990. In fact the 1909 Improvisation was expected to fetch more than the Fugue and almost certainly would have reached its high estimate of $20m had it been presented 6 months earlier.

That relative disappointment did not prevent 2008 from being Kandinsky’s best ever auction year. The $15m generated by Studie zu Improvisation 3 pushed Kandinsky 28 places up the 2008 ranking of artists by auction revenue with an annual revenue total of $39.2m vs. $25.6m in 2007. In 2008 Kandinsky came 28th in Artprice’s ranking and a new record was set for his drawings when a highly rhythmic mixed technique work from 1922 fetched $2.55m on 24 June 2008 at Christie’s in London.

His small format oil paintings, 8 to 12 inches (20-30 cm) change hands for around 300 to 600 thousand dollars on average. However, his abstract works on paper (ink, watercolour or pencil) can be acquired for roughly a tenth of that price range (30 to 60,000 dollars). On 5 February 2009, Christie’s London office offered four works on paper, one of which was an Indian ink drawing from 1925 entitled Zichnung für Punkt und Linie zu Fläche. Very pure and very dynamic, the piece tripled its low estimate despite signs of humidity damage, selling for 28,000 (or $40,412). In fact, considering Kandinsky’s status as one of the most revolutionary and most sought-after artists of the 20th century, the buyer was right to be pleased with the acquisition. Certain watercolours – well-dated and in good condition – may be worth more than his oil works. And if the subject and the date suggest that the piece may have been turning points in the painter’s artistic evolution, the price may go very substantially higher. For example in December 2005, a small format watercolour (20 cm) entitled Entwurf zu Komposition IV, created at the time of the foundation of Der Blaue Reiter in 1911, fetched no less than €430,000 ($506,798) at Hauswedell & Nolte in Hamburg against an estimate of €140,000.

From a statistical point of view, Wassily KANDINSKY’s auction revenue fluctuates to the rhythm of the rare masterpieces offered for public sale, giving his price progression over the last decade a checkered look. Nevertheless, between 1998 and 2008 a significant progression can be identified: 100 euros invested in a work by the abstract master in 1998 was worth an average of 234 euros by December 2008. In fact his prices clearly accelerated over the 2006/2007 period by close to 30%, before slowing a little in 2008 due to the uncertainties and feverishness of the market last year.