Wassily Kandinsky

Gabriele Münter & Johannes Eichner Foundation, Munich
Franz Resch, Gauting
Dr Ewald Rathke, Frankfurt
Acquired from the above by the present owner in the 1970s

Munich, Städtische Galerie, Kandinsky/Münter, 1957, no. 18
Verona, Galleria d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Palazzo Forti, Da Van Gogh a Schiele, L'Europa espressionista 1880-1918, 1989, illustrated in the catalogue
Bolzano, Museo d'Arte Moderna, Franz von Stuck e l'Accademia di Monaco da Kandinsky ad Albers, 1990
Verona, Palazzo Forti, Vasilij Kandinsky, 1993, no. 3
Berlin, Brücke Museum & Tubingen, Kunsthalle, Der frühe Kandinsky 1900-1910, 1994-95, no. 8, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Milan, Fondazione Antonio Mazzotta, Kandinsky, Opere dal Centre Georges Pompidou, 1997-98, illustrated in the catalogue
Milan, Wassily Kandinsky: 1866-1944, 2001
Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Foundation Maeght, Vassily Kandinsky rétrospective, 2001, no. 2, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Genoa, Palazzo Ducale, Vrubel, Jawlensky e gli artisti russi a Genova e nelle Riviere, 2001-02, no. 127
Ludwigshafen, Wilhalm-Hack Museum, Rediscovering the 'Blaue Reiter', 2003-04
Milan, Palazzo Reale, Wassily Kandinsky and Abstractionism in Italy 1930-1950, 2007, illustrated in the catalogue

Hans K. Roethel & Jean K. Benjamin, Kandinsky, Catalogue raisonné of the Oil Paintings 1900-15, London, 1982, vol. I, no. 53, illustrated p. 89

The board is stable. UV examination reveals two small pin-sized spots of inpainting to the green pigment towards the centre of the right edge. There is some paint shrinkage visible, primarily to the dark line of pigment in the sky, and there is some stable craquelure, predominately to the centre of the lower edge and to the centre of the composition with associated small spots of paint loss in places. Each of the four corners show signs of scuffing with associated priming loss in the lower left corner. There is some lovely thick impasto and this work is in overall good condition.
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Composed of thickly worked layers of verdant green pigments, Kochel - Bergwiese vor Waldrand is an important example of Wassily Kandinsky’s early landscapes. Kandinsky was greatly inspired by the dramatic terrain surrounding Kochel, a village around seventy kilometres from Munich, and frequently painted the lakes and forests of the area. In the summer of 1902, when the present work was painted, Kandinsky took his class of students to Kochel in his capacity as a teacher at the Phalanx school. He appears to have found the environs particularly conducive to creative development during this time, as Vivian Endicott-Barnett notes: ‘The colours are clearer and the paint handling more assured in the studies painted in Kochel in the summer of 1902 than in earlier works’ (Vivian Endicott-Barnett & Helmut Friedel, Vasily Kandinsky, A Colorful Life, New York, 1996, p. 47). The summer was also a personally significant one for the artist: it was during these months that the relationship first developed between Kandinsky and one of his students, Gabriele Münter, a fellow artist who was to become his companion between 1903 and 1916.

These jewel-like landscape studies offer a fascinating insight into the earliest stages of Kandinsky’s artistic career, enabling him to hone his utilisation of strong colours as a means to suggest pure shape and form. Indeed, in its bold sweeps of colour, Kochel - Bergwiese vor Waldrand appears to hover close to the border of abstraction, with the merest suggestion of form intimated by the trees on the horizon line. Kandinsky later recalled the importance of these early landscape studies in the development of his creative principles, noting that this earliest phase of his career was dominated by two overriding themes: ‘1. Love of nature. 2. Indefinite stirrings of the urge to create. This love of nature consisted principally of pure joy in enthusiasm for the element of colour. I was often so strongly possessed by a strongly sounding, perfumed patch of blue in the shadow of a bush that I would paint a whole landscape merely in order to fix this patch… It was out of these exercises that my later ability developed, as well as my way of painting sounding landscapes’ (quoted in: Jelena Hahl-Koch, Kandinsky, London, 1993, p. 78).