Wassily Kandinsky

Nina Kandinsky, Paris (the artist's wife)
Galerie Flinker, Paris (acquired in 1977)
Private Collection, New York (acquired from the above in 1978)
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Stockholm, Gummesons Konsthandel, Kandinsky, 1922, no. 7
Berlin, Galerie Goldschmidt-Wallerstein, Kandinsky, 1922
Hanover, Kestner-Gesellschaft e. V., 1923
Erfurt, Angermuseum, Kunstverein, Wassily Kandinsky, 1925
Dresden, Galerie Arnold (Ludwig Gutbier), Kandinsky: Jubiläums-Ausstellung zum 60. Geburtstage, 1926, no. 54
Paris, Galerie Maeght, Kandinsky: période dramatique 1910-1920,1955, no. 22
Paris, Galerie Maeght, Kandinsky: Aquarelles et gouaches. Collection privée de Madame W. Kandinsky, 1957, no. 10, illustrated in colour in Derriere le Miroir (edition accompanying the exhibition)
Humlebæk, Louisiana Museum, Klee-Kandinsky,1971-72, no. 48
Basel, Galerie Beyeler, Kandinsky: Aquarelle und Zeichnungen, 1972, no. 12, illustrated in colour in the catalogue (titled Grün am Rand)
Charleroi, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Wassily Kandinsky: retrospective, 1972, no. 57
Cologne, Galerie Bargera, Wassily Kandinsky, 1866-1944:Gouachen, Aquarelle, Ölbilder und Zeichnungen, 1973, no. 13, illustrated in the catalogue
Bielefeld, Kunsthalle Bielefeld & Munich, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Wassily Kandinsky: Aquarelle, Gouachen, Zeichnungen, 1973-74, no. 16
Paris, Galerie Karl Flinker, Kandinsky: 82 œuvres sur papier de 1902 à 1933, 1977, no. 6, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Dusseldorf, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen & Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Wassily Kandinsky: Aquarelle und Zeichnungen, 1992, no. 65, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
London, The Royal Academy of Arts, Kandinsky: Watercolours and Works on Paper, 1999, no. 53, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Vienna, Bank Austria Kunstforum & Wuppertal, Von der Heydt-Museum, Wassily Kandinsky. Der Klang der Farbe. 1900-1921, 2004, no. 59, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Artist's Handlist, Watercolours, listed as '1919, no. 11, Le bord vert'
Kenneth C. Lindsay, 'Kandinsky's Method and Contemporary Criticism', Magazine of Art, vol. 45, no. 8, December 1952, pp. 355-361
Will Grohmann, Wassily Kandinsky: Life and Work, London, 1959, no. 708, illustrated p. 408
Dora Vallier, 'Kandinsky et l'aquarelle', in L'Oeil, no. 263, June 1977, pp. 26-29
Vivian Endicott Barnett, Kandinsky Watercolours, Catalogue Raisonné, London, 1992, vol. I, no. 519, p. 459, illustrated in colour p. 458
Helmut Friedel & Annegret Hoberg, Vasily Kandinsky, London, 2008, no. 17, illustrated in colour p. 183

Executed on cream wove paper, not laid down, hinged to the mount at the reverse of the top two corners, floating in the mount. There is a horizontal crease, approximately 15cm. in length, to the centre of the upper edge and a small crease to the lower left edge with associated pigment loss. There are three small nicks to the centre upper edge. Apart from some slight time staining and some fading to the pink pigments, this work is in very good condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate in the printed catalogue illustration, althought the paper tone is warmer and less red than in the original.
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Painted in 1919, Entwurf zu grüner Rand is an exceptional example of Kandinsky's triumphant use of watercolour to capture his most intimate and revelatory artistic theories. After returning to Russia in 1915 the tumultuous events surrounding him both at home and abroad led to a shift in his working practises. Vivian Endicott Barnett suggests that his post-revolutionary activities in Moscow, such as his membership of the Department of Visual Arts in the People's Commissariat of Enlightenment and position as director of the Museum of Artistic Culture, left him with little time to work on oils, rather he channelled much of his creativity into a large number of highly worked watercolours, some of which he later based major oil-paintings. The present work is a study for the a monumental oils, Der grüne Rand, the location of which is unfortunately unknown. The importance of the Der grüne Rand is highlighted by the fact that Kandinsky executed two variations in watercolour: one is in the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and the present work whose composition most closely matches that of the final work.

Whilst the composition retains the visual energy of the earlier works from the Munich period, an advance in style is evident in Entwurf zu grüner Rand. Paul Overy writes: 'The few works he was able to produce show a continuous evolution, a progressive rethinking in paint. In the works painted in Russia the geometrical forms can be seen emerging as the result of a gradual simplifying of the amorphous forms which occur in the Munich paintings [...]. The pictorial elements seem to be in a state of tension, pulled one way toward geometric forms and the other way towards the spontaneous exploding forms of the Munich works' (P. Overy, Kandinsky, The Language of the Eye, London, 1969, p. 16).

Frank Whitford suggests that within Entwurf zu grüner Rand there are important compositional devices that reveal the influence of avant-garde Russian painting: 'Hitherto Kandinsky had been opposed to geometric abstraction because he thought it too cerebral. Now he yielded to the influence of those revolutionary Russian painters who, like Malevich and Rodchenko, had developed a rigorously geometric abstract language. The introduction, however wavering, into Kandinsky's work of loosely formed triangles, circles, parallel lines, grids and checkerboard patterns was one result of this. Another was the appearance of a dark, enclosing border within which all the other pictorial elements are distributed, a compositional device related to some of Malevich's [fig. 1]' (F. Whitford, Kandinsky: Watercolours and other Works on Paper (exhibition catalogue), The Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1999, p. 24). Will Grohmann has observed that the 'border' is a defining feature of some of the major paintings from the period such as Weisses Oval (fig. 2) completed in the same year as the present work. It acted as 'a means of balancing the strict rectangular surface of the canvas with the pictorial construction [...]. In Green Border and the watercolour study for it, the curved lines at the left are supported by the line of the frame, extending on to give the picture tension and elasticity' (W. Grohmann, Wassily Kandinsky: Life and Work, London, 1959, p. 166).

The strikingly vivid palette employed in the present work illustrates the artist's highly tuned sense of colour and its application. Kandinsky's response to colour was heightened by a synesthetic combination of sights and sounds. In his first major theoretical text Kandinsky wrote with intense precision about the various meanings and emotions captured by colours: 'In its middle tones such as vermilion, red has more of the constancy of a powerful emotion: it is like a steadily burning passion, a self-confident power that cannot easily be subdued, but can be extinguished by blue, as a red-hot iron by water [...]. Vermilion has a sound like a tuba, and a parallel can be drawn with the sound of a loud drum beat' (quoted in Frank Whitford, ibid., p. 24).

Fig. 1, Kazimir Malevich, Suprematism, 1915, oil on canvas, The Russian State Museum, St. Petersburg

Fig. 2, Wassily Kandinsky, Weisses Oval, 1919, oil on canvas, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow