The artist (1866-1944). Hilla Rebay, New York and Connecticut; James Wise, Geneva; [Sotheby's London, 28 June 1972, no; 70]; Stephen Hahn, NY, 1974; [Galerie Beyeler, Basel, 1976]; Ulrich Pfander, Tegernsee,1982; [sale, Christie's, London, 29 March 1988, no; 334]; [sold at Sotheby's New York,12 Nov 1988, no; 167]; Private Collection, Tokyo; [Pace Wildenstein, New York]; old to 1995 to anice and Henri Lazarof, Los Angeles; given in 2005 to LACMA.  

When Wassily Kandinsky painted this watercolor, he had already left Germany and was about to return to Moscow, where he would remain throughout World War I. The work reflects the style of his mature prewar work—a type of loose, organic abstraction he called an improvisation. Kandinsky remained in Russia during the first years of the Russian Revolution and devoted himself to teaching. He returned to Germany to teach at the Bauhaus in 1922, where he honed a tighter, more geometric form of abstraction, which he theorized in his book Point and Line to Plane (1925). At the Bauhaus, Kandinsky led the wall painting workshop and taught the preliminary course until 1933, when the school was forcibly closed by the Nazi government.

Wall label, 2021.