Wassily Kandinsky

Gabriele Münter, Murnau 
Private Collection, Germany (acquired in the early 1960s)
By descent from the above to the present owner

The canvas is not lined and UV examination reveals no signs of retouching. There are artist's pin holes to all four corners and to the centres of the upper and lowe edge. This work is in very good condition.
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Painted in 1905, Tunis - La Baie is testament to Kandinsky’s first exotic travel abroad with his lover and soul mate Gabrielle Münter.  The couple’s stay in Tunisia from December 1904 to April 1905 not only marked a key period in their relationship, but opened a new artistic path for both of them. Working side by side every day, Kandinsky and Münter produced a series of beach paintings that forms a fascinating artistic dialogue, both artists creating daring works freed from all former artistic conventions. This particular painting is exemplary of Kandinsky’s embrace of new themes and painting techniques. It is a saturated and impassioned depiction of the fleeting effects of light and climate by the sea, and it couldn’t be further removed from the stylised Russian folk and fairy-tale inspired works that he had executed only a few months earlier.

In this at once rich and lyrical portrayal of a Tunisian bay, Kandinsky opens a new realm of visual experience. It is particularly striking in its utilisation of older Impressionist methods, which Kandinsky transforms so daringly, and which anticipate the visual tactics of German Expressionists and French Fauves. The present work is extraordinary for its courageous adoption of impasto and unusually wide and long brushstrokes. The resulting look of this landscape, created using a palette-knife, is one of spontaneity and passion.  A perfect embodiment of Kandinsky’s relationship with Münter, the present work is also one of his earliest successful attempts at ‘touching the soul’ (Ingo F. Walther (ed.), Art of the 20^th Century, Cologne, 2000, p. 105). Tunis - La Baie can also be interpreted in the light of the artist’s famous assertion that: ‘Colour is the key. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano with many strings’ (ibid.).