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Lot Essay
Consisting of a number of strangely amorphous, lyrical and almost embryonic forms, distributed within the severe, rigid geometry of a seemingly hierarchical construction, Distribution is an important watercolour that marks the beginning of a new development in Kandinsky's art. Executed in Paris in December 1934, at the end the first year of the artist's exile from Hitler's Germany, it is one of the first works made in the Russian-born artist's new home to signal the birth of a new organic abstraction.
After the closure of the Bauhaus in 1933, Kandinsky had been obliged to leave Hitler's Germany and he and his wife Nina moved to Neuilly-sur Seine, on the outskirts of Paris, where they soon came into contact with the Abstraction-Création group, whose members, amongst others, included Fernand Léger, Constantin Brancusi, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Hans Arp and Joan Miró. In contrast to the severe geometry and utopian idealism of the constructivism that had been prevalent in Revolutionary Russia and at the Bauhaus, the Abstraction-Création group favoured a 'constructive' art rooted in what they saw as the order of the forms of nature and the intuitive impulse. This philosophy, along with Kandinsky's new environment and his release from responsibility at the Bauhaus, seems to have influenced what was to become an increasingly pronounced shift in his work towards the creation of mysterious nature-based abstract constructions that seemed to speak of new astral or microscopic worlds populated by strange cells and/or bizarre planets.
Distribution (after his move to Paris all of his paintings were titled in French) was one of a number of works Kandinsky sent to his American-based dealer Galka Scheyer. Kandinsky was greatly dependent on the American market for his work, during this difficult period of transition, and sent many of his finest works to Galka Scheyer for exhibition and possible sale in America.
Marking an apparent progressive ascent of amorphous and strange irregular forms within the severe regulated graphic ladder of a laboratory chart-like structure, Distribution echoes strongly another of Kandinsky's most important paintings of this year, Montée tendre (Gentle Ascent). This was an oil, painted in March 1934, that he also sent to Galka Scheyer at this time, and which now forms part of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum's major holding of Kandinsky's work in New York.
After the closure of the Bauhaus in 1933, Kandinsky had been obliged to leave Hitler's Germany and he and his wife Nina moved to Neuilly-sur Seine, on the outskirts of Paris, where they soon came into contact with the Abstraction-Création group, whose members, amongst others, included Fernand Léger, Constantin Brancusi, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Hans Arp and Joan Miró. In contrast to the severe geometry and utopian idealism of the constructivism that had been prevalent in Revolutionary Russia and at the Bauhaus, the Abstraction-Création group favoured a 'constructive' art rooted in what they saw as the order of the forms of nature and the intuitive impulse. This philosophy, along with Kandinsky's new environment and his release from responsibility at the Bauhaus, seems to have influenced what was to become an increasingly pronounced shift in his work towards the creation of mysterious nature-based abstract constructions that seemed to speak of new astral or microscopic worlds populated by strange cells and/or bizarre planets.
Distribution (after his move to Paris all of his paintings were titled in French) was one of a number of works Kandinsky sent to his American-based dealer Galka Scheyer. Kandinsky was greatly dependent on the American market for his work, during this difficult period of transition, and sent many of his finest works to Galka Scheyer for exhibition and possible sale in America.
Marking an apparent progressive ascent of amorphous and strange irregular forms within the severe regulated graphic ladder of a laboratory chart-like structure, Distribution echoes strongly another of Kandinsky's most important paintings of this year, Montée tendre (Gentle Ascent). This was an oil, painted in March 1934, that he also sent to Galka Scheyer at this time, and which now forms part of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum's major holding of Kandinsky's work in New York.