Galerie Maeght, Paris

Adrien Maeght, Paris (sold: Loudmer,&nb🥃sp;Paris, November 28, 1994, lot 56)

Acquired at the above sale

New York, Nierendorf Gallery, Three Masters of the Bauhuas, Kandinsky, Klee, Feininger, 1938

New York, Nierendorf Gallery, Kandinsky, 1941, nos. 17 & 61 (listed twice)

New York, Nierendorf Gallery, Kandinsky, 1942-43, no. 26

New York, Museum of Non-Objective Paintings, Memorial Exhibition, 1945, no. 227

Boston, Institute of Contemporary Art; Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art; New York, M. Knoedler and Co., Inc.; San Francisco, Museum of Art & Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, Kandinsky Retrospective, 1952, no. 22

Paris, Galerie Maeght, Kandinsky, 1953, no. 45

New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Pasadena, The Pasadena Art Museum; San Francisco, Museum of Art; Portland, The Portland Art Museum; San Antonio, Marion Koogler McNay Institute; Colorado Springs, Fine Arts Center; Baltimore, The Baltimore Museum of Art; Columbus, The Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts; St. Louis, Washington University; Montreal; Museum of Fine Arts & Worcester, Art Museum, Wassily Kandinsky, A Retrospective Exhibition, 1963-64, no. 60, illustrated in the catalogue

Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Fondation Maeght, Centenary Exhibition, 1966, no. 98

Paris, Galerie Maeght, Kandinsky, Période Parisienne, 1934-1944, 1969, no. 11, illustrated in the catalogue

New York, Knoedler & Co., Inc., Kandinsky: Parisian Period 1934-1944, 1969, no. 18, illustrated in the catalogue

Zurich, Galerie Maeght, Kandinsky, 1972, no. 56, illustrated in the catalogue

Paris, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Kandinsky, 1972, no. 38, illustrated in the catalogue

São Paulo, XII Biennale, 1973, no. 14

Tokyo, The Seibu Museum of Art, Kandinsky, 1976, no. 33, illustrated in the catalogue

Madrid, Fundacion Juan March, Kandinsky, 1978, no.ജ 27, illustrated i👍n color in the catalogue

The Artist's Handlist IV, no. 652

Will Grohmann, Wassily Kandinsky, Life and Work, New York, 1958, no. 471, illustrated p. 388

Hans K. Roethel & Jean K. Benjamin, Kandinsky, Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil-Paintings, London, 1984, vol. II, no. 1090, illustrated 🐽p. 984

Very good condition. Original canvas. The paint layer is stable and in very good condition, aside from a 1 ½" hairline scuff and other associated small scuffs at the lower left corner. Under UV light, a small water stain is visible at the lower right hand corner of the composition, as well as a small spot of retouching in the orange element at upper right corner of the composition.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Painted in 1938, La Forme rouge belongs to the last great period of abstraction in Kandinsky's art.  In 1933 the artist and his wife Nina moved to Paris, in response to the political situation in Germany, with the intention of staying there for a year.  Ultimately they would remain there for eleven years, until Kandinsky's death in 1944.  They settled in Neuilly-sur-Seine, on the outskirts of Paris, and the years spent there were among the artist's most productive and fruitful.  This new environment gave a fresh impetus to Kandinsky's art, as Jean-Louis Prat has commented: "the work he created in the studio at Neuilly bears witness to a change in style and theme.  To the severe geometric construction which characterised the works of his final Bauhaus years, he superimposes a repertoire of stylised and biomorphic shapes that seem to have been borrowed from the realm of molecular biology" (J.-L. Prat, Kandinsky, Retrospective𝓰 (exhibition catalogue), Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, 2001, p. 196).  🌞;

 

Following his move to the French capital, Kandinsky increasingly came into contact with works by Surrealist artists such as Joan Miró and Jean Arp, and under their influence he moved away from the hard-edged geometrical abstraction that had dominated his œuvre throughout the 1920s.  He found a new, more organic abstract idiom, reflected in the biomorphic shape of the present work.  Coupled with the vibrant palette, this organic affinity imbues La Forme rouge with a wonderfully playful and opt🐼imistic character.  The main form in 𝓀the present work is built up from bands of bright pigment, seen against the monochrome black background, a feature that characterized a number of Kandinsky's works from this time (fig. 2).

 

Kandinsky himself viewed this period of his career as a synthesis of his earlier ventures into abstraction in painting.  He stated: "Abstract art, despite its emancipation, is subject here also to 'natural laws' and is obliged to proceed in the same way that nature did proceed, when it started in a modest way with protoplasm and cells, progressing very gradually to increasingly complex organisms.  Today, abstract art creates also primary or more or less primary art-organisms, whose further development the artist today can predict only in uncertain outline, and which entice, excite him, but can also calm him when he stares into the prospect of the future that faces him" (W. Kandinsky, quoted in Kenneth Lindsay & Peter Vergo, ed., Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art, vol. II, New York, 1982, p. 628).  Combining his poetic sensitivity with a vibrant palette as well as with his theoretical principles, the present work brings together all the elements Kandinsky deemed essential in abstraction: "in order to devote oneself fully to it, one must be a good draftsman, have great sensitivity for composition and for colours and, most importantly, be an authentic poet" (quoted in J.-L. Prat, op. cit., p. 206).