Wassily Kandinsky

(probably) Nina Kandinsky (the artist's widow)

Galerie Maeght, Paris (probably acquired from the above in 1951)

Fernand Graindorge, Liège

John Schulte, New York

Otto Gerson Gallery, New York

Mr. & Mrs. Charles R. Lachman, New York (until 1970)

Felix Landau Gallery, Los Angeles

Private Collection, United States (acquired from the above in 1970 and sold: Sotheby's New York, November 16, 1998, lot 61)

Acquired at the above sale by the present owner

Berlin, Secession, 1909

The Hague, 1909

Dresden, Galerie Arnold; Berlin, Galerie Neumann and Nierendorf, Jubilee Exhibition, 1926, no. 1

Paris, Galerie Maeght, Kandinsky, 1951, no. 31

Basel, Kunsthalle, Collection Fernand Graindorge, 1954, no. 57

New York, Museum of Modern Art; Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum; San Francisco, Museum of Art, The “Wild Beasts”: Fauvism and its Affinities, 1976, p. 143

New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Kandinsky in Munich, 1896-1914, 1982, no. 265

Will Grohmann, Wassily Kandinsky, Life and Work, New York, 1958, p. 330; illustrated no. 15, p. 350

Hans K. Roethel, Kandinsky, Das graphische Werk, Cologne, 1970, no. 113

Peg Weiss, Kandinsky in Munich, The Formative Jugendstil Years, New Jersey, 1979, no. 78

Hans K. Roethel and Jean K. Benjamin, Kandinsky, Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil-Paintings, 1900-1915, vol. 1, New York, 1982, no. 189, illustrated p. 193

Painted during an important transitional period of Kandinsky’s career, Weisser Klang exemplifies the development of the artist’s distinctive personal style, which several years later led to the emergence of abstraction.  The bright, vibrant palette and the fluidity of brushwork evoke a reference to music, which is also referred to in the title of the work.  In his celebrated treatise Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Kandinsky devoted an entire chapter to “color-language”, discussing at length the relationships between colors and musical instruments, rhythms and tones, and establishing a link between music and colorful imagery.  “The studied geometrical composition and the subtle color harmony convey the effect of a musical chord or Klang, a word Kandinsky used to characterize the effect by which the successful work of art communicates its inner meaning.  The work of art, he said, must klingen, or resonate, so that the soul of the viewer vibrates with the same resonance” (Peg Weiss, op. cit., p. 51).   

Of particular significance for Kandinsky, and for the present work in particular, was the poetry of the German Symbolist Stefan George.  At the turn of the century, George had a following of poets and artists that became known as the George-Kreis, or Circle of George.  There are direct parallels between Kandinsky’s art and the imagery of George’s Jugendstil poetry which was characterized by the sound of the words rather than their specific meaning.  The visual harmony of their design on the page was as important to the poet as their sound. Evidently Weisser Klang and a later color woodcut of the same subject from 1911 (see fig. 1), which appeared in the publication Klänge, illustrate George’s poem Weisser Gesang (White Song):

If I could envision the white dream for her…

It would seem to me in the castle that bitter rays permeated

And pale blossom-trees only embraced

So the dream could run away with two children’s early daydreams

Each of them seeming to embrace a slender bouquet

Brightly flickering like a gentle quaking aspen

A silver sash as a pennant

Would swing high above their weak foreheads

And both would come slowly to the pond

Sometimes swaying on the broad marble steps

Until at the beat of the nearby herons’ wings

Their arm’s soft burden heavily swaying

Scented mists swirling in from cool naiads

With whom the united ones became lighter and lighter

Floating upwards towards higher realms –

Until they were one with the pure ether-down.

Peg Weiss suggests that the “reclining figure on the right may be the “dreamer” referred to in the poem, the figure on the left - the woman, and the floating form to the right above them is the “white dream, like a white cloud touching earth” (Peg Weiss, op. cit., pp. 89-90).  Other possible references to the poem include the “quaking aspens”, the “two children” (here one might take the two figures on the right as the two children; on the other hand, it has been suggested that one figure seems to carry a child, which might refer to the “soft burden” in the third verse); the “castle” or churchlike structure in the background, and the “pond” (which is evident in the foreground of the woodcut).  “At the conclusion of the poem, in a cloud of sweet vapors, the dreamy forms rise and fade into the ether.  The painting particularly has the same amorphous quality; the forms seem to fade into one another while the “white sound”, or dream, or song dominates the whole” (ibid., p. 90).

Pictorially, the present work reflects the important influence of Fauve painting on Kandinsky.  During his stay in Paris from May 1906 until June 1907, Fauve pictures by artists including Braque, Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck and Van Dongen were exhibited and received an extraordinary amount of attention in the press.  The following year Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter spent their first summer in Murnau, a small Bavarian village south of Munich, where they began to incorporate an expressive, Fauve-like use of color (see fig. 2).  Their impact on Kandinsky is visible here in the bold chromatic combinations, as well as in the use of strong, unmodulated color applied in broad brushstrokes.  The Fauves’ approach to painting represented for Kandinsky a natural extension of his own visual and theoretical explorations, based on the Russian folk art and icons characterized by a similar use of color and form (see fig. 3).  In Weisser Klang, Kandinsky juxtaposed the bright yellow, pink and orange with cooler blue, green and purple tones, producing the effect of a symphonic explosion of color.

Figure 1 Wassily Kandinsky, Weisser Klang, 1911, woodcut, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich

Figure 2 Wassily Kandinsky, Winterlandschaft I, 1909, oil on canvas, The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg

Figure 3 Wassily Kandinsky, Colorful Life, 1907, oil on canvas, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich