Wassily Kandinsky

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Description

Wassily Kandinsky
DUMPF-KLAR (DULL-CLEAR)
signed with the monogram and dated 28 (lower left); signed with the monogram, titled Dumpf- Klar Simple and dated 28 on the reverse
oil on canvas
63.5 by 20cm., 25 by 7 7/8 in.

Provenance

Jeanne Bucher, Paris
Acquired from the above by the father of the present owner circa 1946-48

Exhibited

Paris, Galerie Cahiers d'Art, Kandinsky: peintures de toutes les époques, aquarelles et dessins, 1934
Bern, Kunsthalle, Wassily Kandinsky, 1937, no. 35
Stockholm, Moderna Museet, Kandinsky, 1965, no. 44

Literature

The artist's handlist IV, no. 425
Will Grohmann, Wassily Kandinsky: Life and Work, London, 1959, no. 285, illustrated p. 373
Hans K. Roethel & Jean K. Benjamin, Kandinsky, Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil-Paintings 1916-1944, London, 1984, vol. II, no. 868, illustrated p. 801

Catalogue Note

The Bauhaus, at which Wassily Kandinsky was teaching, proved an ideal catalyst for a large series of abstract works to which the present work belongs. Kandinsky's paintings evoked a more constructivist form of composition which was in part due to his open-minded attitude of teaching in which pupils imparted their more function-oriented views. As a result Kandinsky becomes tighter and more formal as a painter in the late 1920s without losing the painterly concept of abstraction of his early works.

The present work is emblematic of the Bauhaus period. A deep red circle hovers above a series of dark lines; intercrossing and autonomous as they seperate the circle and the rectangle. The balance of the piece is vital to its author: combining the metaphysical with the concrete. Kandinsky's paint application is of interest as it shows a controlled brushstroke from a painter whose earlier works one equates with a wilder, almost spontaneous, method of painting. Kandinsky is creating as much with his mind as ever and carefully undertaking every mark as a definite step towards the whole.