- 177
Wassily Kandinsky
bidding is closed
Description
- Wassily Kandinsky
- LEICHTE BINDUNG (LIGHT ATTACHMENT)
- signed with the monogram and dated 28 (lower left)
- watercolour and pen and ink on paper
- 32 by 48cm., 12 1/2 by 18 7/8 in.
Provenance
Galerie Zak, Paris (January 1929)
E. Tériade, Paris (1929)
Hanover Gallery, London (1957)
Heinz Berggruen, Paris (1957-59)
Private Collection Switzerland
Acquired by the family of the present owner in the early 1960s
E. Tériade, Paris (1929)
Hanover Gallery, London (1957)
Heinz Berggruen, Paris (1957-59)
Private Collection Switzerland
Acquired by the family of the present owner in the early 1960s
Exhibited
Berlin, Galerie Ferdinand Möller, W. Kandinsky - Neue Aquarelle, 1928, no. 30
Paris, Galerie Zak, Exposition d'aquarelles de Wassily Kandinsky, 1929, no. 26
London, Zwemmer Gallery, Group Exhibition for Christmas, 1935-36, no. 44
Paris, Galerie Zak, Exposition d'aquarelles de Wassily Kandinsky, 1929, no. 26
London, Zwemmer Gallery, Group Exhibition for Christmas, 1935-36, no. 44
Literature
Artist's Handlist, 1928, no. 264
Cahiers d'art, 1928, no. 10, illustrated p. 451
Vivian Endicott Barnett, Kandinsky Watercolours. Catalogue Raisonné 1922-1944, 1994, vol. II, no. 853, illustrated p. 211
Cahiers d'art, 1928, no. 10, illustrated p. 451
Vivian Endicott Barnett, Kandinsky Watercolours. Catalogue Raisonné 1922-1944, 1994, vol. II, no. 853, illustrated p. 211
Catalogue Note
Leichte Bindung, executed in 1928, is a striking example of Kandinsky's œuvre created during his time as a teacher at the Bauhaus. His use of geometrical shapes as opposed to the free floating forms and lines that characterised his work from the previous years in Russia, reflects the influential Bauhaus aesthetics that Kandinsky discusses in his important theoretical publication Punkt und Linie zur Fläche (Point and Line to Plane) from 1926.
The present work was included in Kandinsky's first ever one-man exhibition in Paris, at the Galerie Zak in January 1929. It can therefore be seen as a testimony to the artist's belief at the time that 'the creation of a picture does not unfold in a totally arbitrary fashion but represents a free play of forms within strict rules. These rules are not determined by the artist at will, but are laws which arise from the compositional elements themselves and their immanent energies' (U. Becks-Malorny, Wassily Kandinsky, The Journey to Abstraction, Cologne, 2003, pp. 146-47).
The present work was included in Kandinsky's first ever one-man exhibition in Paris, at the Galerie Zak in January 1929. It can therefore be seen as a testimony to the artist's belief at the time that 'the creation of a picture does not unfold in a totally arbitrary fashion but represents a free play of forms within strict rules. These rules are not determined by the artist at will, but are laws which arise from the compositional elements themselves and their immanent energies' (U. Becks-Malorny, Wassily Kandinsky, The Journey to Abstraction, Cologne, 2003, pp. 146-47).