Wassily Kandinsky

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

Paris, Galerie Karl Flinker, Kandinsky: peintures, dessins, gravures, éditions, œuvres inédites, 1972, no. 12
Cologne, Galerie Bargera, Wassily Kandinsky, 1866-1944: Gouachen, Aquarelle, Ölbilder und Zeichnungen, 1973, no. 69, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Paris, Galerie Karl Flinker, Kandinsky: 82 œuvres sur papier de 1902 à 1933, 1977, no. 38
Dusseldorf, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen & Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Wassily Kandinsky Aquarelle und Zeichnungen, 1992, no. 188, illustrated in colour in the catalogue

Artist's Handlist, Watercolours, listed as '1941, 721 (g.s.noir)'
Will Grohmann, Wassily Kandinsky, Life and Work, New York, 1958, no. 751, illustrated p. 412
Vivian Endicott Barnett, 'Kandinsky Watercolours', in Kandinsky Watercolours. A selection from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Hilla von Rebay Foundation (exhibition catalogue), The Solomon R. Guggenheim Mueum, New York, 1981, mentioned p.18
Hans K. Roethel & Jean K. Benjamin, Kandinsky Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil-Paintings, Volume Two 1916-1944, London, 1984, mentioned p. 1015
Vivian Endicott Barnett, Kandinsky Watercolours, Catalogue Raisonné, London, 1994, vol. II, no. 1356, illustrated p. 523; illustrated in colour p. 478

Executed on black paper, laid down on board, floating in the mount. This work is in excellent condition. Colours: Overall fairly accurate in the printed catalogue illustration.
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Etude pour 'Contrastes Réduits' is an intricately executed gouache from Kandinsky's mature Parisian period. The radical change in style from the Bauhaus combined with a series of innovative technical and theoretical advances led Kandinsky to produce an extraordinarily exciting and original group of work.  One such technical element was in fact a revival of his earliest successes: 'At the same time as his palette approached Art Nouveau delicacy, Kandinsky reverted to a technique that won attention for his first entries at the Salon d'Automne at the beginning of the century: black backgrounds. On black paper or paper colored black, he used tempera to deposit a few spots of color - and this was enough to make the whole surface vibrate immediately with phosphorescent spots and filaments' (Christian Derouet in Kandinsky in Paris (exhibition catalogue), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1985, p. 33).

In Paris Kandinsky, relieved from his duties as a professor at the Bauhaus, used the time and relative freedoms afforded by his situation to concentrate wholly on his art. Jelena Hahl-Koch writes: 'It is clear from his multifaceted late phase that he would not have achieved such maturity had he been politically or socially active. Unlike most artists, Kandinsky was not able to devote himself fully to art until he was thirty, and his demands were consequentially greater; he did not want to paint only squares or do just lyrical work; he wanted both, combining drama and everyday objects, juxtaposing beauty and ugliness, tranquillity and explosions' (J. Hahl-Koch, Kandinsky, London, 1993, p. 324). The artist's wife, Nina, added: 'Certainly in his Parisian period Kandinsky is wholly present. We discover there a Kandinsky who remembers everything that during the course of his work he appears to have forgotten only in order to concentrate the essence and to give us, in this dazzling final firework, the ultimate and thrilling images' (N. Kandinsky in Kandinsky, Parisian Period 1934-1944 (exhibition catalogue), M. Knoedler & Co., New York, 1969, p. 25).