Wassily Kandinsky

Private Collection, Berlin

Galka E. Scheyer, Los Angeles (acquired circa 1924)

Modern Institute of Art, Beverly Hills, California (acquired from the Estate of the above in 1948)

Edna Reindel, California (acquired from the above in 1949 and sold by the Estate: Sotheby’s, New York, November 16, 1989, lot 170)

Private Collection, New York (acquired at the above sale)

Thence by descent

Berlin, Galerie Goldschmidt-Wallerstein, Kandinsky, 1922, n.n.

Stockholm, Gummesons Konsthandel, Kandinsky, 1922, n.n.

Oakland, California, The Oakland Art Gallery, The Blue Four: Feininger, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Klee, 1926, no. 9

Los Angeles, The Los Angles Museum of Art (LACMA), The Blue Four, 1926, no. 71

Portland, Oregon, Museum of Art (Portland Art Association) & Spokane, Washington, Grace Campbell Memorial Building (Spokane Art Association), Feininger, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Paul Klee, 1927, no. 3

San Francisco, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, The Blue Four: Feininger, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Paul Klee, 1931, no. 31

Santa Barbara, Faulkner Memorial Art Gallery, The Blue Four: Feininger, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Paul Klee, 1932, no. 17

Chicago, The Arts Club of Chicago, The Blue Four: Feininger, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Paul Klee, 1932, no. 107

The artist's handlist of watercolors, no. 18 (possibly)

Vivian Endicott Barnett, Kandinsky Watercolours: Catalogue raisonné, London, 1994, vol. II, no. 564, illustrated p. 20

Die schwarze Linie reveals the dual strands of Kandinsky’s creative dialectic to intriguing effect, juxtaposing the angular, geometrically inspired forms of the background shapes with the more organic, colored elements which drift across the center of the composition. The result is a superb example of Kandinsky’s pioneering cultural language during a period of seminal development in his career. The elegant yet emphatic stroke of black ink that dominates the composition, supplying this work with its title, winds its way through the central area of the composition, delineating more delicate watercolor forms and areas of wash. This graceful and exquisitely formed work was created in 1922, shortly after Kandinsky joined the teaching faculty at the newly founded Bauhaus school of art and design in Weimar. Kandinsky’s role, alongside future Blue Four members Lyonel Feininger and Paul Klee, provided the students with introductory courses in art and design as well as lectures on the most innovative artistic theories of the day. Throughout his time at the Bauhaus, Kandinsky’s mode of artistic expression underwent significant change, and his recent acquaintance with the Russian avant-garde and the Revolution had a particularly profound impact on his art. While Kandinsky never fully committed himself to the Constructivist cause, during the course of 1922-23 his work gradually moved away from the free flowing, irregular lines and shapes of his earlier oeuvre, towards a more geometric form of abstraction. Works executed during this pivotal moment were created in a manner honed by a period of great experimentation with new abstract forms and geometrical compositions, dominated by circles, triangles and straight lines rather than undefined shapes and loosely applied paint. Die schwarze Linie reveals Kansinsky’s early explorations into the inherent values of various shapes, and how they interact together. Clark Poling comments, "Basic shapes and straight and curved lines predominate in these paintings, and their black lines against white or light backgrounds maintain a schematic and rigorous quality. The large size and transparency of many of the forms and their open distribution across the picture plane give these compositions a monumentality and an expansiveness despite their relative flatness. Whereas certain abstract features of the series derive from Russian precedents, their vertically positioned triangles and planetary circles refer to landscape.... Nevertheless, the transparency of forms, their rigorous definition and floating quality maintain the abstract character of the works" (C. Poling in Kandinsky: Russian and Bauhaus Year, 1915-1933 (exhibition catalogue), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1983, p. 51).

This eventual shift to strict geometric forms reflects the influence of Russian Constructivist art, to which Kandinsky was exposed during the war years spent in Moscow. The movement was gaining international scope and becoming a significant artistic force in Germany during this time, where geometry was accepted as a universal artistic language. However, while developing his increasingly geometrically abstract vocabulary, Kandinsky's art did not fully adopt the practical, utilitarian quality characteristic of much of Constructivist art. Instead, the poetic and spiritual elements of his earlier works remained the underlying force of his art in the 1920s. This reluctance to fully adopt the rectilinear formula is visible in Die schwarze Linie, the graceful line of which traverses the center of the composition, echoing earlier compositions, particularly the hooked line in his groundbreaking Composition V. Painted in 1911 this controversial work, with its accompanying manifesto On the Spiritual in Art, announced Kandinsky’s unique blend of abstraction to the world. While the more strictly geometric abstractions are apparent in the background of the present work, the twisting, irregularly-shaped fields which coexist in Die schwarze Linie ground the work in Kandinsky’s unique, adaptive style, marrying the tenants of Constructivism with his unique vision of abstraction.

Early on Die schwarze Linie was in the collection of Galka E. Scheyer, a young art promoter and exhibition organizer who, in March 1924 founded the Blue Four (Die Blaue Vier). An artistic cooperative that included Kandinsky, Alexej von Jawlensky, Paul Klee and Lyonel Feininger, the Blue Four was born from the desire to extend the influence of Central and Eastern European contemporary art to America. Scheyer, who had worked tirelessly on expanding Jawlensky’s audience throughout Germany, left for the United States to embark on an exhibition program a few weeks after the group’s founding. Her early appreciation of the worth of these artists and her pioneering efforts to bring attention to their works made great strides in capturing the attention of the American public. Having legally changing her name from Emmy to “Galka,”a playful nickname bestowed by Jawlensky early on in their friendship, and covering her home in the Blue Four works she collected, including the present work, Scheyer’s determination and enthusiasm helped to transform the landscape for the Blue Four internationally. Die schwarze Linie was later in the collection of Surrealist and American Regionalist artist Edna Reindel. It has remained in the same family’s collection for almost thirty years.