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    Sale 6168

    German Pictures

    London

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    7 October 1999

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    • Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)
    Lot 56

    Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)

    Waldrand (Waldlichtung)

    Price realised

    GBP 73,000

    Estimate

    GBP 50,000 - GBP 70,000

    Follow lot

    Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)
    Waldrand (Waldlichtung)
    oil on canvas-board
    9.3/8 x 12.7/8in. (23.8 x 32.8cm.)
    Painted circa 1903

    Provenance

    Gabriele Mnter, Murnau.
    Mr. and Mrs. Robert S. Benjamin, New York.
    Anon. sale, Sotheby's, New York, 17 October 1973, lot 49.
    Aberbach Fine Arts, New York.
    Anon. sale, Christie's, London, 1 July 1975, lot 48.
    Collection Takabatake, Kyoto.

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    Literature and exhibited

    Literature

    H. K. Roethel and J. K. Benjamin, Kandinsky, Catalogue Raisonn of the Oil Paintings, London 1982, vol. I (1900-1915), no. 111 (illustrated p. 130).


    Exhibited

    Munich, Stdtische Galerie, Kandinsky and Gabriele Mnter, February-April 1957, no. 53 (titled 'Waldlichtung'; incorrectly dated circa 1906 and incorrectly catalogued as 'oil on paper').
    Tokyo, The National Museum of Western Art, European Landscape Painting, Sept-Oct. 1978, no. 93.


    Lot Essay

    Waldrand exemplifies the important relationship between Kandinsky's early work and the Neo-Impressionist work of Vincent Van Gogh, whose paintings Kandinsky admired greatly at the 1903 Munich Secession. His use of rich impasto is clearly inspired by the Post-Impressionists, yet his approach to art was radically different: '[Kandinsky], certes, recourt la technique divisioniste, mais d'une autre manire. Il ne cherche pas parvenir la srenit, obtenir cette uniformit de texture dans toutes les zones du tableau, qui caractrise les oeuvres de Signac, Cross ou Luce...
    Parfois, la limite du "chrono", les petites esquisses l'huile [de Kandinsky] sont le plus souvent des tentatives avortes de fixer moins le paysage que l'humeur du peintre telle ou telle beaut naturelle. Elles sont tributaires de l'instant...' (C. Derouet, Oeuvres de Vassily Kandinsky. Les Collections du Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1984, p. 22).
    Kandinsky met Gabriele Mnter in 1902 when Mnter was a student in Kandinsky's class at the Phalanx art school. In the summer of 1903, Kandinsky took his painting class to Kallmnz in the Upper Palatinate of eastern Bavaria. During this summer, Kandinsky painted a number of small landscapes of the areas in and around Kallmnz, including the present work, which he gave as a gift to Gabriele Mnter.

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