Wassily Kandinsky

Nina Kandinsky, Paris (the arist's wife; until 1956)
Private Collection, Stockholm
Sale: Kornfeld & Klipstein, Bern, 7th-8th June 1978, lot 419
Galerie Berggruen, Paris
Private Collection, New York (sold: Christie's, New York, 11th November 1987, lot 154)
Private Collection, New York
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Berlin, Galerie Ferdinand Möller & Saarbrücken, Staatliches Museum, Sonder-Ausstellung W. Kandinsky: Zeichnungen 1910-1931, Neue Aquarelle, Grafik, 1932, no. 75
Milan, Galleria del Milione, Kandinsky, 1934, no. 434
Lucerne, Galerie Rosengart, Kandinsky Exhibition: Paintings, Watercolours, Drawings, 1953, no. 13
Stockholm, Galerie Samlaren, Kandinsky: målningar, akvareller, teckningar, 1956

Artist's Handlist, Watercolours, listed as 'vii 1931, 434, Beruhigt'
Vivian Endicott Barnett, Kandinsky Watercolours, Catalogue Raisonné, London, 1994, vol. II, no. 1044, illustrated p. 313

Executed on cream wove paper, not laid down, hinged to the mount at the reverse of the top two corners, floating in the mount. This work is in excellent condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate in the printed catalogue illustration.
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Executed in 1931, whilst Kandinsky was at the Bauhaus in Dessau, Beruhigt depicts his radical aesthetic theory with all the stylistic hallmarks that defined this period. The overlapping forms distinguished by jewel-hued colour tones are suspended amidst a subtly modulated background. The various forms are poised with a tenderness that suggests the calmness ascribed by the work's title. In a letter to Will Grohmann Kandinsky wrote that he hoped that his audience would grasp 'what lies behind my painting, and are no longer content with the observation that I use triangles or circles [...] It must be finally understood that form for me is only a means to an end, and that I am so thoroughly and completely concerned with form - in my theories, too - because I want to penetrate its inner nature. You once mentioned the word 'Romantic', and I was delighted [...] Today there is a 'New Objectivity' - there ought to be a New Romanticism [...] The meaning, the content of art is Romantic' (quoted in F. Whitford, Kandinsky: Watercolours and other Works on Paper (exhibition catalogue), The Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1999, p. 69).

During the Bauhaus period Kandinsky produced a number of works based primarily on the circle, in which he explored its inherent values, as well as its interaction with other forms. Writing about these works Clark Poling comments: 'Basic shapes and straight and curved lines predominate in these paintings, and their black lines against white or light backgrounds maintain a schematic and rigorous quality. The large size and transparency of many of the forms and their open distribution across the picture plane give these compositions a monumentality and an expansiveness despite their relative flatness. Whereas certain abstract features of the series derive from Russian precedents, their vertically positioned triangles and planetary circles refer to landscape [...]. Nevertheless, the transparency of forms, their rigorous definition and floating quality maintain the abstract character of the works' (Clark Poling, Kandinsky: Russian and Bauhaus Year, 1915-1933 (exhibition catalogue), The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1983, p. 51).