Wassily Kandinsky

Evelyn Mayer, San Francisco (gifted from the artist in 1928)
Heinz Berggruen, Paris (acquired in 1959)
Private Collection, Rome (acquired in 1962)
Galerie Beyeler, Basel (acquired in 1962)
Acquired from the above in 1963 and thence by descent

Zwickau, Zwickauer Kunstverein, Jubiläumsausstellung, 1924
Paris, Berggruen & Cie., Klee et Kandinsky: une confrontation, 1959, illustrated in the catalogue
Rome, Galleria La Medusa, Baumeister, Bissier, Kandinsky, Klee,
no. 231, illustrated in the catalogue

Wassily Kandinsky, Hauskatalog (listed as "x 1924, 151, Spritze")
Vivian Endicott Barnett, Kandinsky, Watercolours, Catalogue Raisonné, Volume 2, 1922-1944, no. 710, illustrated p. 113

Executed on cream wove paper laid down on card by the artist. Sheet is slightly time-darkened. Colors are bright and fresh, work is in very good condition.
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The aesthetic theories governing many of Kandinsky's compositions throughout his career derived from his 1911 treatise, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, in which he praised the power of color and its influence on the beholder. Executed in 1924, Spritze takes these theories further, with its emphasis on the individuality of shapes and their harmonious placement within a composition. Kandinsky believed that particular arrangements of shapes triggered an "inner resonance" or "spiritual vibration," and could elicit from the viewer a powerful emotional response. Jagged solid forms, arcs, grids, triangles and circles, whether overlapping or adjacent, served to celebrate the beauty of form for form's sake. By the time he executed the present work, Kandinsky was an active member of the Bauhaus, the school created by Walter Gropius for the advancement of modern art and architecture in Germany.

Writing about this pivotal period in Kandinsky's art, Clark Poling commented: "Basic shapes and straight and curved lines predominate in these paintings, and their black lines against white or light backgrounds maintain a schematic and rigorous quality. The large size and transparency of many of the forms and their open distribution across the picture plane give these compositions a monumentality and an expansiveness despite their relative flatness. Whereas certain abstract features of the series derive from Russian precedents, their vertically positioned triangles and planetary circles refer to landscape... Nevertheless, the transparency of forms, their rigorous definition and floating quality maintain the abstract character of the work" (Clark Poling, Kandinsky, Bauhaus and Russian Years (exhibition catalogue), The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1983, p. 51).