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Lot Essay
Park von St Cloud - mit Reiter was executed in the autumn of 1906 during Kandinsky's year-long stay in Paris. It belongs to an important period of transition for the artist which culminated in 1908 with his move to Murnau and the creation there of his first great breakthrough paintings that marked his emergence as an important figure among the international avant-garde.
The paintings Kandinsky painted in Paris show the artist on the brink of maturity. Heavily influenced by the Neo-Impressionist techniques with which he had been experimenting for over two years, the heavy impasto of his paintings has grown so intense in the Parisian works that they have become almost over-laden with colour. The landscapes of the Park of St Cloud near Kandinsky's house in Sèvres are infused with such a weight of compacted heavy colour that they seem to be on the point of bursting,out from the rigorous compositional restrictions of the picture into a thousand different directions. The density and intensity of these works reflects the culmination of Kandinsky's slowly developed mastery of the Neo-Impressionist technique.
As is so often the case, art tends to mirror life and just as Kandinsky's art was slowly building towards a decisive change that would lead to a new freedom (and ultimately to abstraction), so was his personal life. Kandinsky had left Munich for Paris in June 1906 accompanied by his mistress Gabrielle Münter. His work had sold well in Paris at the 1904 salon, yet Kandinsky preferred to remain aloof from the hurly-burly of the Paris artworld, settling in Sèvres - a small village outside the city - where he kept very much to himself. It was a time of growing mental crisis for the artist who was grieving about the death of his half-brother Vladimir and also feeling guilty about his relationship of his first wife Anja. It was a period in which he needed solitude and to listen to his inner voice. In November, he even sent Münter away and she left for a while to live with friends in Paris. On his return to Munich in 1907 Kandinsky grew restless and, realising that there too he needed peace and quiet away from the distractions and politicizing of the artworld, moved to the sleepy village of Murnau with Münter to concentrate solely on the inner world of his art.
It was in the St. Cloud paintings and what he called his "coloured drawings" that Kandinsky first began to merge the two distinct styles of painting he had adopted - the Neo-Impressionist style with his fairytale-like portraits of Russian folk imagery. Park von St Cloud - mit Reiter is one of the finest of the Sèvres landscapes that with its representation of a lone rider emerging from the autumn shadows both looks back to a painting like Der Blaue Reiter of 1903 and anticipates the developments of the future.
The paintings Kandinsky painted in Paris show the artist on the brink of maturity. Heavily influenced by the Neo-Impressionist techniques with which he had been experimenting for over two years, the heavy impasto of his paintings has grown so intense in the Parisian works that they have become almost over-laden with colour. The landscapes of the Park of St Cloud near Kandinsky's house in Sèvres are infused with such a weight of compacted heavy colour that they seem to be on the point of bursting,out from the rigorous compositional restrictions of the picture into a thousand different directions. The density and intensity of these works reflects the culmination of Kandinsky's slowly developed mastery of the Neo-Impressionist technique.
As is so often the case, art tends to mirror life and just as Kandinsky's art was slowly building towards a decisive change that would lead to a new freedom (and ultimately to abstraction), so was his personal life. Kandinsky had left Munich for Paris in June 1906 accompanied by his mistress Gabrielle Münter. His work had sold well in Paris at the 1904 salon, yet Kandinsky preferred to remain aloof from the hurly-burly of the Paris artworld, settling in Sèvres - a small village outside the city - where he kept very much to himself. It was a time of growing mental crisis for the artist who was grieving about the death of his half-brother Vladimir and also feeling guilty about his relationship of his first wife Anja. It was a period in which he needed solitude and to listen to his inner voice. In November, he even sent Münter away and she left for a while to live with friends in Paris. On his return to Munich in 1907 Kandinsky grew restless and, realising that there too he needed peace and quiet away from the distractions and politicizing of the artworld, moved to the sleepy village of Murnau with Münter to concentrate solely on the inner world of his art.
It was in the St. Cloud paintings and what he called his "coloured drawings" that Kandinsky first began to merge the two distinct styles of painting he had adopted - the Neo-Impressionist style with his fairytale-like portraits of Russian folk imagery. Park von St Cloud - mit Reiter is one of the finest of the Sèvres landscapes that with its representation of a lone rider emerging from the autumn shadows both looks back to a painting like Der Blaue Reiter of 1903 and anticipates the developments of the future.