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Lot Essay
The present work was executed by Kandinsky in Paris, to where he had moved in 1934 and would continue to live with his wife Nina, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, until 1944, the year of his death. The year 1940 marked the beginning of the Nazi occupation in Paris. Kandinsky and his wife fled to the South for a brief period but then returned to Paris. Although it was the last period of his artistic output, Kandinsky introduced new techniques and imagery to his work rather than continuing in variations of the same. For example, during his years in Paris, he used sand for the first time in his oil paintings to achieve a different texture.
In his gouaches, like in the present work, he introduced pastel colours and organic shapes and forms resembling mico-organisms like worms, amboids, embryos and marine invertebrates viewed through a microscope. These creatures often appear to float or swim in a blue or dark hued background. The works of this time illustrate Kandinsky's interest in similarities between structures in nature and art. In 1935 Kandinsky wrote of 'the experience of the small and great, the micro- and macrocosmic, coherence', referring to the 'hidden soul' in all things, seen either by the unaided eye or through microscopes or binoculars'. This 'internal eye' ... penetrates the hard shell, the external 'form', goes deep into the object and lets us feel with all or senses its internal 'pulse' ('Two Directions', 1935, quoted in F. Whitford, Kandinsky Watercolours and other works on Paper, London, 1999, p. 82).
In his gouaches, like in the present work, he introduced pastel colours and organic shapes and forms resembling mico-organisms like worms, amboids, embryos and marine invertebrates viewed through a microscope. These creatures often appear to float or swim in a blue or dark hued background. The works of this time illustrate Kandinsky's interest in similarities between structures in nature and art. In 1935 Kandinsky wrote of 'the experience of the small and great, the micro- and macrocosmic, coherence', referring to the 'hidden soul' in all things, seen either by the unaided eye or through microscopes or binoculars'. This 'internal eye' ... penetrates the hard shell, the external 'form', goes deep into the object and lets us feel with all or senses its internal 'pulse' ('Two Directions', 1935, quoted in F. Whitford, Kandinsky Watercolours and other works on Paper, London, 1999, p. 82).