No figure played a greater role in the development and emergence of abstraction than Wassily Kandinsky and his contribution is exemplified in a work such as Tensions calmées. Painted in 1937, it reveals an artistic pioneer at the height of his powers, drawing on a career that saw him travel from an essentially figurative Fauve style to a fully abstracted visual language in the early 1910s, further refining his aesthetic in the measured experiments of his years at the Bauhaus. Tensions calmées is a powerful abstract masterpiece that was formerly in the collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and was shown in major exhibitions worldwide, including the seminal 1938 exhibition Abstracte Kunst (see below). It illustrates an important chapter in the history of twentieth century art, underlining Kandinsky’s unique contribution and his profound influence both on his contemporaries and on subsequent generations of artists.
The Path to Abstraction
At the beginning of the twentieth century change was in the air; building on the innovations of the post-Impressionists and Fauves, artists across Europe had started exploring an increasingly abstracted visual language. These early experiments took a range of forms, from Picasso’s Cubist deconstruction of objects to the theosophic, mystical canvases of Hilma af Klint or František Kupka and Robert Delaunay’s dynamic canvases. From this context, Kandinsky’s singular artistic vision emerged; in the years from 1907 to 1913 he pioneered a lyrical form of abstraction infused with musicality, that offered a transcendental, spiritual truth. Over the decades that followed, Kandinsky’s continued interrogation of form and colour would come to define abstract art.
Kandinsky was aware from the outset that he was heading into new territory. In a letter to his lover and fellow painter Gabriele Münter written on 2nd April 1904 Kandinsky wrote: ‘Without exaggerating, I can say that, should I succeed in this task, I will be showing [a] new, beautiful path for painting susceptible to infinite development. I am on a new track, which some masters, just here and there, suspected, and which will be recognised, sooner or later’.
His first major breakthrough was his discovery that colour, when disassociated from representational concerns, could become the principal subject of a painting. Taking his cue from musical composition, Kandinsky determined that every colour corresponded with a particular emotion or ‘sound’. ‘Colour is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano, with its many strings’, he famously wrote in Concerning the Spiritual in Art, ‘The artist is the hand that purposefully sets the soul vibrating by means of this or that key’ (W. Kandinsky, “Concerning the Spiritual in Art,” 1911, reprinted in C. Harrison & P. Wood, Art in Theory, 1900-1990, Oxford, 1992, p. 94). By the time he wrote this treatise he had consolidated his abstract vision; its publication coincided with Der Blaue Reiter's inaugural exhibition in December 1911 at which Kandinsky exhibited works which redefined the course of twentieth century art.
Forced to return to Russia at the outbreak of the First World War, he entered a new artistic milieu. His arrival would have a considerable impact on the artists of the Russian avant-garde. Writing in 1920 the critic Konstantin Umansky stated unequivocally: ‘The entire Russian art scene can be traced back to Kandinsky. If anyone deserves a nick name, Kandinsky does; he should be called the “Russian Messiah” […], his work has cleared a way for the victory of absolute art’ (quoted in J. Hahl-Koch, op. cit., p. 243). When he returned from Russia to Germany at the invitation of Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, Kandinsky brought with him the seeds of pure, geometric abstraction which had begun to germinate in Moscow. So far as his early work had influenced the evolution of Suprematism, so too had he absorbed the stark beauties of that aesthetic and at the Bauhaus in Dessau he reinvigorated it with his own distinctly poetic sensibilities. His art took a new turn as he embraced a more geometrical style, transforming the lyrical shapes of his pre-First World War painting into a form of abstraction more clearly focused on colour and line. His work during this period was directed by the methodical study of optics and colour theory that was an integral part of his teaching, and which was also central in the work of his fellow-teachers Paul Klee and Josef Albers. These years of study and experiment would continue to inform Kandinsky’s art into the next decade and can be seen in the precise lines and brilliantly conceived colouration of a work like Tensions calmées.
Over forty years Kandinsky devoted himself to the development of abstraction; his belief that abstract forms were the only way to express the ‘inner necessity’ of the artist and his commitment to the ‘spiritual in art’ which he understood as the expressive potential of colour and form, mark him out as a true pioneer. It was these beliefs and this dedication that made him such an influential figure both in the rise of Abstract Expressionism in the 1940s and for artists right up to the present day.
Abstraction in the Twentieth Century
Kandinsky and Paris
The works Kandinsky painted during the 1930s in Paris are considered the culmination of his artistic ideology. The artist had a long and significant association with the French capital which he first visited in 1889. He spent his formative years in 1906-07 living on the outskirts in Sèvres, and had the opportunity to study Cézanne’s great late compositions and to see first-hand the work of Fauve artists Derain and Vlaminck. This experience connected him with a wider European avant-garde and would in part lay the foundations for his development of abstract art when he returned to Germany in the summer of 1907.
In 1933, when the Bauhaus was forced to close, Kandinsky took the decision to emigrate from an increasingly hostile Germany to France and returned to Paris. He and his wife settled at 135 Boulevard de la Seine in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a wealthy inner suburb of Paris, where he was to live out the remainder of his life. The city had a profound impact on him. As the artist wrote in a letter to the director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Alfred J. Barr: ‘When I moved to Paris I was so bowled over by light and nature… Paris with its marvellous light (soft and intense) has softened my palette: there are other colours, other entirely new forms and some that I had not used for years’ (Letter to Alfred Barr, 1936, quoted in Kandinsky (exhibition catalogue), Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2009, p. 228). The works of the 1930s, and particularly of the golden period from 1935-38, are characterised by an energy and optimism that run counter to the deteriorating situation in Europe and which are indicative of an artist at the very height of his powers.
While his development in the 1920s had been strongly influenced by his Bauhaus colleague Paul Klee, whose watercolours and oil paintings of these years demonstrate similar artistic predilections, Kandinsky’s production in France took a different direction. The large-scale compositions of this period draw on a wealth of visual references that look back to his Russian origins and forward to a new future. Striking textural and colour contrasts characterise these paintings, many of which evidence what Will Grohmann noted as a distinctly Baroque musicality. The imagery of Tensions calmées deliberately evokes the elegant clefs, notes and bards of sheet music whilst the curved arabesque of a violin scroll emerges in the right of the composition. Yet, as seen in Kandinsky’s celebrated Compositions and Improvisations, the musicality comes not from the individual parts but from his orchestration of the composition as a whole; as the title of the present work indicates, the result is a symphonic explosion of colour and form in which many dissonant elements are resolved into harmony. As Grohmann observes: ‘The works of the Paris years have been described as expressing a superior synthesis; in Kandinsky’s language, this would mean that they reflect a union of head and heart, of compositional technique and intuition, but also a branching out toward other sensory experiences, particularly toward music, and even a scientific relationship with scientific thinking’ (W. Grohman, op. cit., p. 227).
In 1930s Paris the artistic avant-garde was dominated by Surrealism. Although Kandinsky was well aware of the movement – he had exhibited with the proto-surrealist Dada group in Zurich in 1916 – he was never a Surrealist and declined Breton’s invitations to exhibit alongside them. Nonetheless, he was drawn to their use of biomorphic forms; he found Dalí’s sexualised imagery unappealing but the works of Joan Miró or his friend Hans Arp were an important influence. That may be because their interest in nature and the natural world coincided with Kandinsky’s own interest in images drawn from scientific journals or the encyclopaedia Die Kultur der Gegenwart, whose volumes were in the artist’s library and marked in many instances with references to specific illustrations which correspond to canvases of the period.
Despite the artist’s increased incorporation of forms from the natural world, his imagery did not become a realistic interpretation of figuration. Rather, 'The Paris imagery typically reflects an accommodation between the geometry of preceding years,' writes Vivian Endicott Barnett, 'and a new vocabulary of organic forms. The triangles, circles and squares that were the basis of Kandinsky’s Bauhaus grammar do not completely disappear but are still alluded to in irregular, fantastic biomorphic shapes. They ultimately assume an independent pictorial life and endow the paintings and gouaches of Kandinsky’s late years with their unique character […]. Drawing upon imaginary sources that may be rooted in a fauna and flora found under the microscope, on the bottom of the sea and in other environments not ordinarily visible, Kandinsky presents tangible if fantastic fragments of reality. These fragments constitute an independent pictorial world—a world of the artist’s own making that is analogous but not identical to our own. Thus, at the end of his life Kandinsky synthesizes art and nature, idea and substance and formal sources from East and West on surfaces that have become the artist’s exemplary plane of consciousness and awareness' (V. E. Barnett, Kandinsky at the Guggenheim, New York, 1983, pp. 16-17).
Rayé, 1934
81 by 100cm.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Courbe dominante, 1936
130 by 195cm.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Tensions claires, 1937
89 by 116cm.
Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art
Mouvement I, 1935
116 by 89cm.
The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
Composition IX, 1936
114 by 195cm.
Centre Pompidou, Paris
Composition X, 1939
130 by 195cm.
Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf
Noeud rouge, 1936
89 by 116cm.
Fondation Maeght, St-Paul-de-Vence
Kandinsky and Guggenheim
The history of Tensions calmées after it left Kandinsky is not only testament to its importance within his œuvre but is also a key part of the wider story of his reception and influence in the United States over the twentieth century. Kandinsky met Solomon R. Guggenheim in 1930 at the Bauhaus, although the latter had already started collecting Kandinsky’s work at the suggestion of artist Hilla Rebay. Over the following decade the relationship between the two would be hugely important to the artist; as the political situation in Germany worsened, with the National Socialist government forcing the closure of the Bauhaus school, Kandinsky began to look towards the United States and France for potential purchasers of his pictures. Galka Scheyer – who had done so much already to establish his reputation in America in the late 1920s – proved to be a great resource, but it was Guggenheim’s support that would enable the artist to establish himself in France.
With the guidance of Rebay, Guggenheim spent the decade that followed building a remarkable collection of what he termed ‘non-objective’ art, including more than 150 works by Kandinsky. When they opened the Museum of Non-Objective Paintings in New York in 1939 these works would form the core of the collection. It was here in 1943 that a young Jackson Pollock – working briefly as a janitor – would have the opportunity to immerse himself in Kandinsky’s abstract world. As well as buying his works Guggenheim continued to promote them with a series of exhibitions, including the memorial exhibition organised after the artist’s death in 1944 in which Tensions calmées was included and a touring exhibition that brought Kandinsky’s work to an audience across the breadth of the United States. In doing so, Guggenheim played a major role in establishing Kandinsky’s legacy as the father of abstraction.
An important part of the Guggenheim’s original holdings, Tensions calmées was also part of the next chapter in the story. In 1964, in line with their commitment to exhibit as much of their collection as possible, the Guggenheim Foundation decided to offer 50 paintings by Kandinsky for sale at Sotheby’s in London. With a collection that comprised multiple masterpieces from the key periods of Kandinsky’s career, The Foundation took great care in selecting the best examples of the artist’s work for auction. The sale was unique; hitherto the vast majority of the artist’s œuvre had belonged to museums in Russia, the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich and to the artist’s widow, Nina Kandinsky and so the auction offered many collectors the first opportunity to acquire a major work by Kandinsky. It was at this celebrated auction that Tensions calmées was acquired by the family of the present owner and it has been in their collection ever since.