The Hilti Art Foundation in Liechtenstein acquired Wassily Kandinsky’s Improvisation 21, painted in 1911, after buying the work last year from the former collection of Hermann and Marie Lange in Krefeld, Germany. Only around 30 of the artist’s Improvisations are known to survive, many of which reside in major institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The painting is now on view in the foundation’s Abstract exhibition, which continues until 17 May 2027 alongside new acquisitions by Carmen Herrera and Mark Rothko.
A round-up published by The Art Newspaper on 22 July detailed how the Kandinsky joins other significant additions to the Liechtenstein collection. Kandinsky developed the Improvisation series during a formative phase of his move toward abstraction. Separate auction records from the first half of 2026 show one of his 1925 paintings selling for $14.48 million at Sotheby’s New York while another from 1939 fetched $16.73 million at Christie’s in London, according to HENI News.
Remai Modern in Saskatoon has become the first museum in Western Canada to acquire a work by minimalist pioneer Agnes Martin through the purchase of her 2000 canvas Tranquility. The 1.5-square-metre painting was bought from Pace in New York with funds from the Frank and Ellen Remai Foundation, The Art Newspaper reported. Martin was born in Saskatchewan in 1912 and lived until 2004, with her explorations of colour, light and subtle grids forming a cornerstone of minimalism.
The acquisition positions Remai Modern as only the third Canadian institution to hold a Martin painting after the National Gallery of Canada and the Art Gallery of Ontario. A report published in May by 620 CKRM noted that the work carries strong regional resonance despite the artist having spent much of her life outside the province. Tranquility is scheduled to appear in a series of exhibitions the museum will stage in 2027 to mark its tenth anniversary.
The Frank and Ellen Remai Foundation has donated more than $100 million to Remai Modern since 2012 and has enabled the purchase of 134 works by artists from Saskatchewan, Canada and abroad. Co-executive directors Aileen Burns and Johan Lundh described the Martin as allowing the museum to tell a story rooted in the province that influenced broader modern art history. The Art Newspaper placed the acquisition within a wider group of recent institutional purchases.
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas added a significant frieze by Betty Woodman as part of the same acquisitions wave covered by The Art Newspaper. In a separate August review of July activity, Apollo Magazine reported that the Neue Galerie in New York received more than 1,000 postcards produced by the Wiener Werkstätte between 1903 and 1932. The Detroit Institute of Arts simultaneously accepted over 2,000 modern and contemporary works from local collectors Gilbert and Lila Silverman, according to the same Apollo summary.
