Wassily Kandinsky

Alexander Strakosch, Switzerland (acquired from the artist)

Clemens Weiler, Weisbaden

Kleeman Galleries, New York  (sold:  Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, December 11, 1963, lot 50)

A.A. Juviler (Acquired at the above sale)

Allan Hofrichter

Quadriennale Nazionale d'Art di Roma, Ente Manifestazioni Milanesi, Arte Tedesca dal 1905 ad Oggi, December 1957 to March 1958, no. 120

New York, Kleeman Galleries, Wassily Kandinsky, 1957, no. 26

New York, Leonard Hutton Galleries, Der Blaue Reiter, 1963, no. 5

Will Grohmann, Wassily Kandinsky, 1958, no. 586, illustrated p. 398

Hans Roethel and Jean Benjamin, Kandinsky Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Volume 1, 1900-1915, Ithaca, New York, 1982, no. 238, illustrated p. 230

The weeks Kandinsky spent in Murnau in the summer of 1908 were among the most decisive of his career. He had not worked out of doors for several years and the picturesque scenery of the countryside around the village of Murnau, south of Munich, gave his painting a renewed energy. The liberty taken with color by the Fauve painters whose works he had seen in Paris in 1906-07 had been a revelation, pointing the way towards the invention of a pictorial language that would free painting from the object. In Murnau he was able to build on that experience, and to understand, just as Matisse and Derain had understood, how to formulate an abstraction from nature. Landscapes, such as this one, are characterized by a simplification of forms created by exploiting the contrast between Kandinsky’s early paintings and the momentous works of 1910 which announce his art of chromatic abstraction.

''As if a gate had suddenly opened onto a new vista, Kandinsky now experienced liberation in style that represented a dramatic break with the recent past. All at once, there seemed to be a way to resolve the dichotomy between the Impressionist landscapes and the lyric works that held his heart in thrall so long. In several later statements Kandinsky explained that his transition to abstraction has been effected by means of three major steps: the overcoming of two-dimensionality; the new application of graphic elements to oil painting: the creation of a new floating space by the separation of color from line.'' (P. Weiss exh. Cat. Kandinsky in Munich 1869-1914, Soloman R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1982, p. 59)