.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Kandinsky began work on the woodcuts for Klänge as early as 1907, exhibiting four proof impressions in the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1910. A number of studies for the prints are in the Gabriele Mnter Stiftung in the Lembachhaus in Munich.
Kandinsky had long associated music and writing, and in a letter to Gabriele Mnter from 1904 he wrote that a work of art must 'klingen' (resonate). In the brochure published for Klänge Kandinsky wrote 'Ich wollte nichts als Klänge bilden, Sie bilden sich aber von Selbst. Das ist die Bezeichnung des Inhaltes, des Inneren. Es ist der Grund, der Boden, auf welchem allerhand, teils von Selbst, teils dank der Hand der berechnenden Gärtners wuchs (quoted in R. Jentsch, op. cit., p. 60).
The book is a combination or synthesis of prose-poems and images. 'Kandinsky's prose-poems are experimental in technique, but fully assured, and are characterised by strange juxtapositions and combinations of sometimes violent events, things seen and acts of seeing, feelings, abstracts, sounds and verbal encounters, the results being frequently grotesque and comic. The woodcuts range in style from Kandinsky's early fairy-tale idiom to fully-fledged abstracts of great power and beauty'. (A. Griffiths and F. Carey, op. cit, p. 246)
Frances Carey and Anthony Griffiths describe this as 'one of the most beautiful books of the twentieth century'.
Kandinsky had long associated music and writing, and in a letter to Gabriele Mnter from 1904 he wrote that a work of art must 'klingen' (resonate). In the brochure published for Klänge Kandinsky wrote 'Ich wollte nichts als Klänge bilden, Sie bilden sich aber von Selbst. Das ist die Bezeichnung des Inhaltes, des Inneren. Es ist der Grund, der Boden, auf welchem allerhand, teils von Selbst, teils dank der Hand der berechnenden Gärtners wuchs (quoted in R. Jentsch, op. cit., p. 60).
The book is a combination or synthesis of prose-poems and images. 'Kandinsky's prose-poems are experimental in technique, but fully assured, and are characterised by strange juxtapositions and combinations of sometimes violent events, things seen and acts of seeing, feelings, abstracts, sounds and verbal encounters, the results being frequently grotesque and comic. The woodcuts range in style from Kandinsky's early fairy-tale idiom to fully-fledged abstracts of great power and beauty'. (A. Griffiths and F. Carey, op. cit, p. 246)
Frances Carey and Anthony Griffiths describe this as 'one of the most beautiful books of the twentieth century'.