Kandinsky inside the Last Drama of the Bauhaus

[Pierre Tavlitzki]

After the glorious years of the Blaue Reiter, Kandinsky found at the Bauhaus an environment conducive to his teaching and developing of art theories.

Pioneer of abstract art, he did not consider it as a simple assembly of geometries, but rather as this symbolism which makes his work looking so hermetic after the First World War. The surface shapes, the density of colors and the meeting of lines and points should form a musical design to exacerbate the sensitivity of the observer of the work.

In 1932, Kandinsky is already for ten years a master at the Bauhaus. Modernist teachings of this school had focused the hatred of extremists from the beginning. Events rushed with the arrival of the Nazis in the town council of Dessau. The Bauhaus left for Berlin where it will be dissolved a few months later. The attempt of Mies van der Rohe to depoliticize the school had been uneffective to face the Nazi steamroller.

On November 4 in New York, Sotheby's sells "Mild und Krass," painted in early 1932 by Kandinsky before the close out of Dessau. The artist was supported by the philanthropist Solomon Guggenheim who bought many paintings including this one.

A large black triangle, haunting, pointed down, is like the dagger of the threat that the politics push on the art (Krass, dramatic). The free and light forms that fly around are empty (Mild, sweet).

Curiously, the figurative works from before 1910 have most attracted the interest of Kandinsky fans at auction in recent years. The arrival of this tragic painting will again highlight the abstract period, which corresponds to what the public better knows of this artist. In these conditions, the estimated $ 6 million is reasonable.

[Pierre Tavlitzki]

There was no doubt about the importance of this work, it is why I said that the estimate was "reasonable".

The result confirms: $ 10.6 million including premium.

Here is an image of this painting in an article shared by the New York Times before the sale.