Kandinsky painting stolen by Nazis fetches record £37.2m at auction

Art handlers display Kandinsky’s Murnau mit Kirche II at Sotheby’s in London. The painting is said to have heralded the Russian master’s move towards abstract art. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

A Wassily Kandinsky masterpiece that had been stolen by the Nazis, who killed its owner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944, has been sold for a record £37.2m at auction in London.

The painting was sold at Sotheby’s on behalf of the great-grandchildren of the owner. They were recently reunited with the 1910 work, titled Murnau mit Kirche II (Murnau with Church II), which had been discovered in a museum in Eindhoven in the Netherlands.