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Lot Essay
To be illustrated in the addendum of the forthcoming catalogue raisonn of Kandinsky drawings currently being prepared by Vivian Endicott Barnett.
After the Bauhaus moved from Weimar to Dessau in 1925, Kandinsky began to perfect his theories of geometric abstraction, form and color, reflecting developments within the Bauhaus and the burgeoning constructivist movement in Germany. In 1926 he published Punkt und Linie zu Flche (Point and Line to Plane), outlining his theories of the basic elements of artistic composition. "The Bauhaus provided a context in which a range of artistic points of view were allowed to flourish, within the parameters of a commitment to geometric forms and structural principles. Here, as elsewhere in Europe where abstract art was developing in the teens and twenties, it was believed that geometry provided a universal language." (C. Poling, Kandinsky: Russian and Bauhaus Years, New York, 1983, p.49).
At this time the artist was continuously exploring the relationships between colors and forms,
"When Kandinsky overlaps one form with another he creates the illusion that the overlapping form is semi-transparent because the color of the form underneath is modified by the form that overlaps it. ... Kandinsky deliberately does not make the resulting color always that which one would expect according to the principles of color pigments. The overlapping form acts as a sort of filter rather on the principle of filters used in photography, but the colors are not arrived at according to any known rules." (P. Overy, Kandinsky, The Language of the Eye, London, 1969, p.108).
The first owner of this work, Evelyn S. Mayer (1890-1955), was a long-time friend of Galka Scheyer, the first promoter and collector of the Blaue Reiter artists Kandinsky, Jawlensky, Klee and Feininger in America. An artist and art professor at the San Francisco State Teachers College (now San Francisco State University), Mayer was highly influential in exposing the innovative style and theories of these artists to the west coast of the USA. In June 1928 the two women travelled to Prague to attend the Sixth International Congress for Art Education together, thereafter continuing on to Dessau, where they met with both Kandinsky and Klee. In December of that year Kandinsky gave Mayer a watercolor, Spritze (1924, B.710), later decribing Mayer as "a distinctive and uncommon type of collector, one who made sacrifices to purchase art on a meager salary alone" (quoted in N. Sawelson-Gorse, op. ct., p.53). It is most likely that Mayer purchased the present work on that Dessau visit in 1928.
After the Bauhaus moved from Weimar to Dessau in 1925, Kandinsky began to perfect his theories of geometric abstraction, form and color, reflecting developments within the Bauhaus and the burgeoning constructivist movement in Germany. In 1926 he published Punkt und Linie zu Flche (Point and Line to Plane), outlining his theories of the basic elements of artistic composition. "The Bauhaus provided a context in which a range of artistic points of view were allowed to flourish, within the parameters of a commitment to geometric forms and structural principles. Here, as elsewhere in Europe where abstract art was developing in the teens and twenties, it was believed that geometry provided a universal language." (C. Poling, Kandinsky: Russian and Bauhaus Years, New York, 1983, p.49).
At this time the artist was continuously exploring the relationships between colors and forms,
"When Kandinsky overlaps one form with another he creates the illusion that the overlapping form is semi-transparent because the color of the form underneath is modified by the form that overlaps it. ... Kandinsky deliberately does not make the resulting color always that which one would expect according to the principles of color pigments. The overlapping form acts as a sort of filter rather on the principle of filters used in photography, but the colors are not arrived at according to any known rules." (P. Overy, Kandinsky, The Language of the Eye, London, 1969, p.108).
The first owner of this work, Evelyn S. Mayer (1890-1955), was a long-time friend of Galka Scheyer, the first promoter and collector of the Blaue Reiter artists Kandinsky, Jawlensky, Klee and Feininger in America. An artist and art professor at the San Francisco State Teachers College (now San Francisco State University), Mayer was highly influential in exposing the innovative style and theories of these artists to the west coast of the USA. In June 1928 the two women travelled to Prague to attend the Sixth International Congress for Art Education together, thereafter continuing on to Dessau, where they met with both Kandinsky and Klee. In December of that year Kandinsky gave Mayer a watercolor, Spritze (1924, B.710), later decribing Mayer as "a distinctive and uncommon type of collector, one who made sacrifices to purchase art on a meager salary alone" (quoted in N. Sawelson-Gorse, op. ct., p.53). It is most likely that Mayer purchased the present work on that Dessau visit in 1928.