WASSILY KANDINSKY | Montée des grilles

Nina Kandinsky, Paris (the artist's wife)
Galerie Maeght, Paris
Sidney Janis Gallery, New York (acquired by 1949)
Galerie Maeght, Paris 
Acquired from the above

Paris, Galerie l'Esquisse, Peintures abstraites, compositions de matières: Domela, Kandinsky, Magnelli, de Staël, 1944, n.n.
Zurich, Kunsthaus Zurich, Georges Braque, Wassily Kandinsky 1866-1944, Pablo Picasso, 1946, no. 118
New York, Sidney Janis Gallery, Kandinsky, 1949, n.n.

The artist's handlist, no. 632
"Kandinsky's Exhibition at Janis," in Art News, vol. XLVIII, no. 8, December 1949, illustrated p. 45
Art News Annual, vol. XX, New York, 1951, illustrated p. 139
Will Grohmann, Kandinsky, Life and Work, New York, 1958, no. 747, illustrated p. 411 
Vivian Endicott Barnett, Kandinsky Watercolours, Catalogue Raisonné, 1922-1944, vol. II, London, 1994, no. 1267, illustrated p. 465

The work is in excellent condition. Executed on black colored wove paper. The sheet has been laid down to a card. The pigments are extremely bright and fresh. There are some minor stains along the center of the upper edge, and some extremely minor surface scuffs to the paper.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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While his development was strongly influenced in the 1920s by his Bauhaus colleague Paul Klee, whose watercolors and oil paintings of these years demonstrate similar artistic predilections, Kandinsky’s production in Paris took a different direction. The stimulation of Surrealist Paris inspired a shift from primary colors to pastels. Although Kandinsky was well aware of Surrealism—he had exhibited with the proto-surrealist Dada group in Zurich in 1916 and the Surrealists in Paris in 1933—he never identified as one. Their emphasis on automatic writing and the unconscious was far from his concept of “inner necessity" which drew him instead toward ideas of nature and natural growth. 

“The Paris imagery typically reflects an accommodation between the geometry of preceding years,” writes Vivian Endicott Barnett, “and a new vocabulary of organic forms. The triangles, circles and squares that were the basis of Kandinsky’s Bauhaus grammar do not completely disappear but are still alluded to in irregular, fantastic biomorphic shapes. They ultimately assume an independent pictorial life and endow the paintings and gouaches of Kandinsky’s late years with their unique character" (Vivian Endicott Barnett, Kandinsky at the Guggenheim, New York, 1983, pp. 16-17).