The art market’s biggest week of the autumn is two weeks away, and the lot everyone is talking about is a square canvas painted in Weimar a century ago. Christie’s will offer Wassily Kandinsky’s Betonte Ecken (“Accented Corners”) as a leading highlight of its 20th Century Evening Sale in New York on 17 November 2026, with an estimate of $60–80 million. The auction house says openly that the work is poised to break the artist’s auction record.
A painting with a Guggenheim past
The oil on canvas measures 130 by 130 centimetres and was painted between December 1922 and January 1923, during Kandinsky’s Bauhaus years. Christie’s describes it as a direct predecessor of Komposition VIII (1923), one of the Guggenheim’s great treasures. The provenance tells its own story: the German artist and adviser Hilla Rebay acquired the painting in 1929, Solomon R. Guggenheim bought it from her in 1938 and gave it to his foundation in 1941, where it stayed until 1964. More recently it hung in the 2025 Kandinsky exhibition at the Museum Barberini in Potsdam. It is offered from a distinguished European collection and carries a third-party guarantee.
Momentum from London
The timing is striking. In October, another Kandinsky, the 1907 Das bunte Leben, sold at Christie’s in London for £31.56 million (about $42 million), the top lot of the London season. A result inside the new estimate would push the artist’s market into a different league.
The wider week
Christie’s says its New York 20/21 Marquee Week brings more than 850 works with expected totals above $800 million, from the 20th Century Evening Sale on 17 November to the 21st Century Evening Sale on 19 November, with collections such as those of Clive Davis and Agnes Gund. Sotheby’s opens its own run on 16 November with the Now and Contemporary Evening Auction, led by Roy Lichtenstein’s Reflections on “Painter and Model” at $20–30 million, and its Modern Evening Auction follows on 18 November. Phillips holds its evening sale the same day. Public viewings at the houses open on 7 November.
Whether the Kandinsky reaches its estimate will make the headlines. For a reading of the market’s health, though, the depth of bidding in the middle price ranges may say more than any single trophy.