WASSILY KANDINSKY | Rapallo: Grauer Tag (Rapallo: Grey Day)

Gabriele Münter, Murnau (acquired from the artist)

Fritz & Peter Nathan, Zurich

The Lefevre Gallery, London (acquired in 1963)

Private Collection, England

Sale: Christie’s, New York, May 18, 1983, lot 334

Acquired at the above sale 

Munich, Städtische Galerie, Kandinsky, 1957, no. 38

Nottingham, Nottingham Castle Museum, Sounds of Colour, 1984, no. 17

Jerusalem, The Israel Museum, Wassily Kandinsky: The Color of Abstraction, 1999, n.n., illustrated in color in the catalogue

Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Fondation Maeght, Vassily Kandinsky. Rétrospective, 2001, no. 12, illustrated in color in the catalogue

London, The Courtauld Gallery, 2002-18 (on loan)

Hans K. Roethel & Jean K. Benjamin, Kandinsky, Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil-Paintings, 1900-1915, vol. I, New York, 1982, no. 144, illustrated p. 156

Judi Freeman, The Fridart Collection: Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Modern Masterworks, London, 1998, illustrated in color p. 110

The Courtauld Institute of Art, ed., The 20th Century at the Courtauld Institute Gallery, London, 2002, illustrated in color p. 53

Rapallo: Grauer Tag was painted within the first few days of Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter's residence in Rapallo, a seaside town just down the coast from the Ligurian capital of Genoa. Upon their arrival Kandinsky and Münter took an apartment at 24 Via Montebello with a view of the sixteenth-century Castello di Rapallo and the boat-studded harbor. Here they would remain for over five months.  During their stay, Kandinsky would paint around eighteen small-format canvases depicting the harbor, fishing boats, the surrounding coastline and the local architecture. This small format lent itself to Kandinsky and Münter's peripatetic lifestyle and the fluid use of pigment, often applied with a palette knife, further added to the sense of painterly spontaneity found in the best of Kandinsky's works from this period.