Wassily Kandinsky

Nina Kandinsky, Paris (the artist's wife)
Galerie Maeght, Paris (acquired from the above)
Galerie Berggruen, Paris (acquired in 1972)
Private Collection, New York (acquired from the above)
Acquired from the above by the present owner

 

Brunswick, Schloss, Gesellschaft der Freunde junger Kunst, Jubiläums-Ausstellung W. Kandinsky, 1926, no. 40
Dresden, Galerie Arnold (Ludwig Gutbier), Kandinsky: Jubiläums-Ausstellung zum 60. Geburtstage, 1926, no. 78
Mannheim, Stadtische Kunsthalle Mannheim, Wege und Richtungen der abstrakten Malerei in Europa, 1927, no. 110
Halle, Hallischer Kunstverein, Roter Turm & Moritzburg, Städtisches Museum, Wassily Kandinsky, 1929
Berlin, Galerie Alfred Flechtheim, Kandinsky, 1931, no. 2
Milan, Galleria del Milione, Kandinsky, 1934, no. 170
Paris, Galerie l'Esquisse, Etapes de l'œuvre de Wassily Kandinsky, 1944
Charleroi, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Wassily Kandinsky: rétrospective, 1972, no. 62
Zurich, Galerie Maeght, Kandinsky: Ölbilder, Gouachen, Zeichnungen, 1972, no. 5
Paris, Galerie Berggruen & Cie., Kandinsky: aquarelles & dessins, 1972, no. 22, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
London, The Lefevre Gallery, Oil Paintings and Watercolours by Wassily Kandinsky, 1973, no. 20, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Artist's Handlist, Watercolours, listed as 'xi 1924, 170, Gewärmtes Kühl'
Vivian Endicott Barnett, Kandinsky Watercolours, Catalogue Raisonné, London, 1994, vol. II, no. 729, illustrated in colour p. 123

Executed on cream wove paper, laid down on board, floating in the mount. Apart from a very small scratch on the black upper left , tiny losses to the aubergine coloured pigment and a slight abrasion in the lower left corner, this work is in very good condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate in the printed catalogue illustration, although they are richer and the paper tone is warmer in the original.
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Gewärmtes Kühl is executed in Kandinsky's most eloquent abstract manner, incorporating a contrast of delicate geometric precision and soft modulated colour. The architectural style Kandinsky developed whilst teaching at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau had a profound impact on abstract art as a whole. The artist stated: 'Abstract art, despite its emancipation, is subject here also to 'natural laws' and is obliged to proceed in the same way that nature did proceed, when it started in a modest way with protoplasm and cells, progressing very gradually to increasingly complex organisms. Today, abstract art creates also primary or more or less primary art organisms, whose further development the artist today can predict only in uncertain outline, and which entice, excite him, but can also calm him when he stares into the prospect of the future that faces him' (quoted in Kenneth Lindsay & Peter Vergo (ed.), Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art, New York, 1982, vol. II, p. 628).

The composition of the present work incoporates a fine border which creates a sense of pictorial autonomy. It is an example of how Kandinsky used compositional devices to produce 'Small Worlds' which are entirely independent from external influences. Frank Whitford suggests that where he had previously incorporated naturalistic motifs such as the 'mountain', in his Bauhaus period 'he began and ended with purely abstract forms, endowing them with innately pictorial significance - warmth, hardness, recession, tension, motion, direction and the like [...]. Kandinsky's Bauhaus paintings are harder and cooler than anything he had done before. Energy, previously reflected in the attack with which the marks and colours were set down, is now conveyed by a dynamic tension between the compositional elements' (F. Whitford in Kandinsky Watercolours and other Works on Paper (exhibition catalogue), The Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1999, p. 69).