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Case file s1774 · Literature and art · 1980
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1980
Nina Kandinsky: Portrait de Nina Kandinsky, Hugo Erfurth, 1924
Nina Kandinsky. Hugo Erfurth. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
Died
2 September 1980
Place
Gstaad, Switzerland
Field
widow and estate holder of painter Wassily Kandinsky · Visual art and architecture on the timeline
Legal tradition
Swiss criminal law; French law (bequest) · Civil law
Historical event
Unsolved robbery-murder of the keeper of the Kandinsky estate
Literature and artBurned papers and destroyed workMurder and sudden deathPostwarEuropeSwitzerland

Nina Kandinsky was strangled at her Gstaad chalet in 1980, about $2 million of her jewellery was stolen, and no one has been charged

Wassily Kandinsky died in 1944. His widow Nina sold works to major museums and consigned a large group to the dealer Karl Nierendorf. In January 1980 she gave the Centre Pompidou all his works then in her possession. In all she gave the Centre 113 oil paintings, 741 watercolours and drawings and a large archive. On 2 September 1980, aged 81, she was attacked and strangled at her chalet in Gstaad. About $2 million of jewellery was taken, including a $930,000 Cartier necklace she had recently bought. No artwork was taken. Police searched across Europe. Nobody was ever charged. Fourteen people attended her funeral in Paris. Her chalet sold in 1983 for $1.14 million, and the proceeds were given to the French state. Her estate, reported at more than a million francs, went to the Societe Kandinsky, which used it to publish catalogues raisonnes. About 400 works became French state property. Kandinsky's own will had asked that his collection go to the Russian people; Nina's will favored France. A German journalist's inquiry, titled "Who murdered Nina Kandinsky?", did not solve the case, and Swiss police said it could not be solved.

What the law took from it

A widow holding a famous collection and valuable jewellery needs to move the collection into an institution early; the gift to Pompidou was made before her death.

Family version vs. the record

The memoir author's Swiss publisher said a Russian relative was already in prison for trying to sell the jewels. The author, Kandinsky scholar Jelena Hahl-Fontaine, says there was no such relative and nobody was imprisoned.

scene4.com
Sources
  1. scene4.comPress
  2. Wikipedia (English)Encyclopedia

Cite as: celebrity.estate, “Nina Kandinsky was strangled at her Gstaad chalet in 1980, about $2 million of her jewellery was stolen, and no one has been charged,” story s1774, https://www.celebrity.estate/nina-kandinsky-1980, updated 30 October 2026.

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Where this case sits

Literature and artBurned papers and destroyed workMurder and sudden deathPostwarEuropeCivil lawSwitzerland