Wassily Kandinsky

Nina Kandinsky, Paris (wife of the artist)
Galerie Beyeler, Basel (acquired from the above in 1972)
Acquired from the above by the present owner in August 1972

Lucerne, Galerie Rosengart, Kandinsky Exhibition: Paintings, Watercolours, Drawings, 1953, no. 21
New York, Museum of Modern Art; Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario and Bern, Kunstmuseum, Kandinsky Watercolors, 1969-70, no. 31 (New York), 32 (Toronto), 66 (Bern)
Humlebæk, Louisiana Museum, Klee-Kandinsky, 1971, no. 66
Basel, Galerie Beyeler, Kandinsky. Aquarelle und Zeichnungen, 1972, no. 68, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Dusseldorf, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen and Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie, Kandinsky. Kleine Freuden: Aquarelle und Zeichnungen, 1992, no. 161, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Lugano, Museo Cantonale d'Arte, Kandinsky, 1995, no. 69, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Jelena Hahl-Koch, Kandinsky, London, 1993, p. 355, pl. 425, illustrated in colour
Vivian Endicott Barnett, Kandinsky Watercolours. Catalogue Raisonné 1922-1944, London, 1994, vol. II, p. 429, no. 1220; p. 407, illustrated in colour

The present work, executed in 1938, is a magnificient example of Kandinsky's series of works executed on black paper. The style he developed in France shows elements which can be traced back to his earlier and most influential Bauhaus period. Geometric elements, lines and square shapes still dominate his gouaches of the late 1930s. However, the shift from his earlier purist Bauhaus language of forms towards a more organic, biomorphic vocabulary is especially apparent in Au-dessus.

Kandinsky seems to create a fantasy world of shapes and organic forms that appear as if seen under a microscope. The precise execution and the wonderful bright colouring give the work a jewel-like quality. The elements appear to become fragments of a non-existing, created and therefore abstract pictorial reality. As Will Grohamm writes: “With these last works he did not create fundamentally new conceptions, but he went to the limits of communicability within the existing ones, exploring ever more exhaustively the sphere of the symbolic” (W. Grohamm, Wassily Kandinsky, Life and Work, New York, 1959, p. 237).

As the present work illustrates, this combination of forms, employed in a unified manner, further enhances the rhythmic sensation of movement, energy and metamorphosis present in much of Kandinsky’s work.