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Artist or Maker: Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)

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Provenance: Max Bill, Zurich, by 1957, and thence by descent to the present owner.

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Exhibited: Paris, Galerie L'Esquisse, 1944.
Bern, Kunsthalle, 1955, no. 114.
Sao Paulo, IV Biennial of the Museum of Modern Art of Sao Paulo, September - December 1957.
Zurich, Helmhaus, Konkrete Kunst 50 jahre entwicklung, 1960, p. 31 (illustrated p. 68).
Lausanne, Palais de Beaulieu, Chefs- d'oeuvre des collections Suisses, May - October 1964.
Baden-Baden, Staatliche Kunsthalle, Wassily Kandinsky, July - September 1970, no. 179 (illustrated).
New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Kandinsky in Paris, February - April 1985, no. 154 (loaned by Max Bill); this exhibition later travelled to Houston, Museum of Fine Arts, June - August and Vienna, Museum d 20 Jahrhunderts, Autumn.
Milan, Palazzo Reale, Kandinsky à Paris 1934-1944, 1985, no. 123 (illustrated p. 236).
Munich, Haus der Kunst, Elan vital, Kandinsky, Klee, Arp, Miró, Calder, 1994, no. 288 (illustrated p. 413).
Lugano, Museo Cantonale d'Arte, Kandinsky Nelle Collezione Svizzere, June - October 1995, no. 84 (illustrated in colour p. 257).

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Literature: The Artist's Handlist, vol. IV, no. 714.
W. Grohmann, Wassily Kandinsky: Life and Work, London, 1959, p. 342 (illustrated p. 324).
F. Whitford, Kandinsky, London, 1967 (illustrated in colour p. 46 and a detail on the back cover).
P. Overy, Kandinsky: The Language of the Eye, New York, 1969, no. 68 (illustrated in colour).
G. di San Lazzaro, Homage to Wassily Kandinsky, London, 1975 (illustrated p. 117; titled Five Parts).
H.K. Roethel & J. Benjamin, Kandinsky, Catalogue raisonné of the oil paintings, vol. II, 1916-1944, London, 1984, no. 1151 (illustrated p. 1043).

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Notes: 'I do not see the difference between a so-called 'abstract' line and a fish, but an essential similarity' (Wassily Kandinsky)

One of Kandinsky's last works, Sept (Seven) was painted in Paris in 1943 and was given by the artist to his close friend, colleague and former pupil at the Bauhaus, the sculptor Max Bill. Kandinsky had moved to the French capital from Germany after the closure of the Bauhaus in 1933 and remained there until his death in 1944. As so often in his life the move precipitated a major change in the style of his art and in Paris, amidst difficult financial circumstances, Kandinsky's art entered a dramatic new phase. Having established himself as the foremost master of abstraction, in Paris, the abstract forms of Kandinsky's art, began to develop a strange figurative recognisability. For so long characterised by the straight lines and harsh geometry that typified the work of the Bauhaus, in Paris, Kandinsky's art took on the form of mysterious organic elements. Amoeba-like forms and embryonic shapes began to form semi-distinct characters and hieroglyphic style patterns of form that hinted at a coded form of meaning but one that forever remained mysterious and enigmatic as if suspended between the two worlds of figuration and abstraction. 'The content of painting is painting,' Kandinsky pointed out at this time, 'Here nothing needs to be deciphered; the content speaks, full of joy, to everyone to whom form as such is alive...and he to whom form 'speaks' will not unconditionally search for objects...therefore, I am not afraid if something insinuates itself into my forms which is reminiscent of a shape in nature. I calmly leave it and do not want to delete it. Who knows, perhaps all our 'abstract' shapes are some 'forms of nature', though not 'utensils'.' (Kandinsky cited in H.K.Roethel and J. Benjamin, Kandinsky , London, 1979, p. 166.)

Impoverished during his last years in Paris and with canvas extremely scarce during the war, Kandinsky's last great paintings were all painted on sheets of cardboard that he had managed to acquire. Sept, so named because of the seven separate compartments in the picture, presents a hieroglyphic chart-like collation of seemingly animate abstract forms. As if introducing the forms of a new biology they articulate a sense of the fantastic logic and order of a mysterious and hidden world of beauty lying beneath or within the forms of the reality of the world we know. A pictorial manifestation of his belief that not only all painting but also all of nature is essentially abstract, and that phenomenal 'figurative' reality, is but a surface manifestation of this fundamental truth, the forms of Sept seem to assert themselves as grammatical elements of a new pictorial language that exists half way between the two. 'Ask yourself' Kandinsky wrote, 'if a work has surreptitiously taken you away into a world thus far unknown to you. If so, what more do you want.' (Ibid, p. 160)

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