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Lot Essay
Getrennt-Verbunden (Divided - Connected) is a rare and important watercolour painted by Kandinsky during the troubled month of July 1933, when the Bauhaus was finally closed. Shortly afterwards Kandinsky, who had been one of the Bauhaus’ longest serving master, felt compelled to leave Germany and moved to Paris where he was to spend the rest of his life. Getrennt-Verbunden is one of only very few works in Kandinsky'’s oeuvre from this difficult period that seem to refer to external circumstances in his life. It is a work that, as its title suggests, forms a harmonious composition split into two by a dominant brown vertical.
In 1932 the Dessau Bauhaus had been forced to close due to the withdrawal of public funds by the newly elected Nazi town council. Moving to Berlin and established for the first time as an entirely privately funded institution, it spent its last unhappy days in a disused telephone factory in the south-western suburb of Steiglitz. With Hitler'’s coming to power in 1933 in the April of that year, the building was searched by the Berlin Police and many students were arrested. During a period of subsequent negotiations the director of the Berlin Bauhaus, Mies van der Rohe, was informed that the school could only continue on condition that two politically undesirable members of staff were dismissed. One of these was Kandinsky.
Although a German citizen. Kandinsky, as he pointed out in a letter to Galka Scheyer, was well aware of his “weak points” in the eyes of the Nazis. In spite of his German citizenship he was a Russian, that is a foreigner who could never be above suspicion of being a Communist. In addition, he was also an abstract painter and, “worst of all”, he explained, “a teacher at the Bauhaus.”
The Bauhaus was finally closed on 20 July. Apart from Getrennt-Verbunden two other seminal works of this period clearly point to this repressive time in Kandinsky's life. They are the appropriately titled TrŸbe Lage (Gloomy Situatio)) and the last oil Kandinsky painted in Germany, Entwicklung in Braun (Development in Brown) in which, as is probable in this work, a dominant and oppressive use of brown was used symbolically to refer to the oppression of the Nazis - the political movement closely identified with the brown shirts of its Storm-troopers.
Using the “cool” geometric forms that he had mastered during his years at the Bauhaus, Kandinsky has created in Getrennt-Verbunden a complex but harmonious fusion of coloured form that ultimately echoes its title. The right hand side of the painting is an imaginative and somewhat Schlemmer-like composition that could stand alone in its own right. It has been separated from the sparser building-block forms of the left hand side of the painting in the same way that Kandinsky had been separated from the Bauhaus. At the same time however, the overall unison of this abstract composition seems to suggest that in a wider sense both the individual and the institution are inseparable.
In 1932 the Dessau Bauhaus had been forced to close due to the withdrawal of public funds by the newly elected Nazi town council. Moving to Berlin and established for the first time as an entirely privately funded institution, it spent its last unhappy days in a disused telephone factory in the south-western suburb of Steiglitz. With Hitler'’s coming to power in 1933 in the April of that year, the building was searched by the Berlin Police and many students were arrested. During a period of subsequent negotiations the director of the Berlin Bauhaus, Mies van der Rohe, was informed that the school could only continue on condition that two politically undesirable members of staff were dismissed. One of these was Kandinsky.
Although a German citizen. Kandinsky, as he pointed out in a letter to Galka Scheyer, was well aware of his “weak points” in the eyes of the Nazis. In spite of his German citizenship he was a Russian, that is a foreigner who could never be above suspicion of being a Communist. In addition, he was also an abstract painter and, “worst of all”, he explained, “a teacher at the Bauhaus.”
The Bauhaus was finally closed on 20 July. Apart from Getrennt-Verbunden two other seminal works of this period clearly point to this repressive time in Kandinsky's life. They are the appropriately titled TrŸbe Lage (Gloomy Situatio)) and the last oil Kandinsky painted in Germany, Entwicklung in Braun (Development in Brown) in which, as is probable in this work, a dominant and oppressive use of brown was used symbolically to refer to the oppression of the Nazis - the political movement closely identified with the brown shirts of its Storm-troopers.
Using the “cool” geometric forms that he had mastered during his years at the Bauhaus, Kandinsky has created in Getrennt-Verbunden a complex but harmonious fusion of coloured form that ultimately echoes its title. The right hand side of the painting is an imaginative and somewhat Schlemmer-like composition that could stand alone in its own right. It has been separated from the sparser building-block forms of the left hand side of the painting in the same way that Kandinsky had been separated from the Bauhaus. At the same time however, the overall unison of this abstract composition seems to suggest that in a wider sense both the individual and the institution are inseparable.