Kandinsky in Paris

All paintings by Vasily Kandinsky (French, born Russia, 1866-1944). Accompanied Contrast (Contraste accompagné), March 1935, oil with sand on canvas. First and third images courtesy Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. First and third images copyright 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris.

Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was a central figure in the Guggenheim Museum's early development and is represented in its collection with pieces from his expressionist period and subsequent phases of his artwork at the German Bauhaus and in Paris. The museum's founder, Solomon R. Guggenheim, started acquiring works by Vasily in 1929 under the guidance of Hilla Rebay, the museum's first director. More than 150 watercolors and oils were displayed in permanent galleries in the Museum of Non-Objective Painting (as the Guggenheim Museum was formerly named) when it opened in 1939.

The current retrospective, Kandinsky in Paris, 1934-1944, includes paintings from the last years of the artist's career. It's the third show in a project that began in 1982 with Kandinsky in Munich, 1896-1914 and continued in 1983 with Kandinsky: Russian and Bauhaus Years, 1915-1933. Vasily's separable phases were the result of emigrations--from Germany during World War I, from his native Moscow four years after the 1917 Revolution and again from Germany after the closure in 1933 of the Bauhaus, where he taught. In 1939 he became a French citizen, living in the Parisian suburb Neuilly-sur-Seine.

Vasily Kandinsky, 1936.

These phases are distinct stylistically. While in Munich, he studied traditional landscape painting and produced decorative designs, pottery and woodcuts; during this period he created his first abstract expressionist paintings. In Russia, he grew away from the expressionistic elements of his prior art toward an abstract, geometric style and occasionally painted views of Moscow. At the Bauhaus, he explored simplified geometric compositions. 

Dominant Curve (Courbe dominante), April 1936, oil on canvas.

The Paris years were highly creative. Vasily utilized biomorphic imagery (amoebas and other cellular and plant forms derived from scientific observations) in his paintings, synthesizing elements from his earlier phases. Softer, more malleable shapes associated with the work of Paris-based Surrealist artists (Jean Arp and Joan Miró) appear in his paintings. His first Paris pictures date from February 1934, starting with watercolors--he completed 34 of them in addition to 12 oil paintings. By 1940, the year's output was 60 gouache watercolors and 10 paintings. He returned to large canvases, replacing his trademark primary colors with pastels and tightened his compositions into regimented, often whimsical, spaces. "I find an exuberance and a sort of a joyousness in some of the paintings from this period," says curator Tracey Bashkoff. "He reinvents himself when he goes to Paris toward the end of his life, and he begins with a reinvigorated color palette and a new vocabulary of warmth in his work. I find them very optimistic and uplifting."

On view through April 23 at the Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Ave.