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Collections

Wassily Kandinsky
Untitled1915

Not on view
Abstract watercolor and ink on cream paper with dense, gestural black brushstrokes over patches of rust-orange, cobalt blue, yellow, and green
Artist or Maker
Wassily Kandinsky
Russia, also active Germany and France, 1866–1944
Title
Untitled
Place Made
Germany and France
Date Made
1915
Medium
Watercolor and ink on paper
Dimensions
13 1/4 × 9 in. (33.6 × 22.9 cm)
Credit Line
Partial, fractional and promised gift of Janice and Henri Lazarof
Accession Number
M.2005.70.41
Classification
Drawings
Collecting Area
Modern Art
Curatorial Notes

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.

Provenance

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]; sold in to 1995 to Janice and Henri Lazarof, Los Angeles; given in 2005 to LACMA.


Selected Bibliography
  • Barron, Stephanie. Envisioning Modernism: The Janice and Henri Lazarof Collection. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Munich; New York: DelMonico Books-Prestel, 2012.