Galka E. Scheyer, Los Angeles (acquired by 1933 and until 1945)
Nina Kandinsky, Paris (acquired by the late 1940s)
Galerie Maeght, Paris (acquired by 1972)
Sale: Guy Loudmer, Paris, October 27, 1982, lot 29
Private Collection, Switzerland

Oakland, Oakland Art Gallery, Paintings by Wassily Kandinsky, the 'Old Master' of Abstract Art, 1935, n.n.
Seattle, Cornish School, The Blue Four, 1939, n.n.
San Francisco, San Francisco Museum of Art, Paintings by Wassily Kandinsky: A Survey 1923 to Present, 1939, n.n.
Los Angeles, Stendahl Art Galleries, Kandinsky, 1940, n.n.
Humlebaek, Louisiana Museum, Klee—Kandinsky, 1971-72, no. 63
Charleroi, Palais des beaux-arts, Wassily Kandinsky: Rétrospective, 1972, no. 68
Zurich, Galerie Maeght, Kandinsky: Ölbilder, Gouachen, Zeichnungen, 1972, no. 39
Madrid, Fondación Juan March, Kandinsky 1923-1944, 1978, no. 52
Tokyo, Fuji Television Gallery, Wassily Kandinsky, 1989, n.n., illustrated in color in the catalogue

Hans K. Roethel & Jean K. Benjamin, Kandinsky. Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings, Volume Two 1916-1944, vol. II, London, 1984, no. 973, illustrated p. 884
Vivian Endicott Barnett, Kandinsky, Watercolours, Catalogue Raisonné, vol. II, New York, 1994, no. 1096, illustrated p. 340

Executed on cream wove paper affixed to the artist's mount. The card is inscribed by the artist on its reverse. Top, left and bottom edges are deckled. Right edge is cut. Sheet may be slightly time darkened overall though the coloration is very strong. There is some minor glue residue around the extreme perimeter of the work that may have dis colored slightly. The sheet is slightly dirty. Otherwise fine. This work is in good condition.
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.

Composed of a single circle and rectangle floating amidst delicate tones of purple and violet, Kreis und Rechteck is a serenely constructed work which reveals Kandinsky’s utterly distinctive use of geometric form. Kreis und Rechteck was created as Kandinsky approached the end of his time at the Bauhaus, the progressive arts school where he had first arrived as a teacher in 1922. His eleven years there were highly productive ones for the artist, who thrived in the liberal creative environment of the school until it closed as a result of the worsening German political and social climate in 1933. Executed the year before his departure from Germany, Kreis und Rechteck can arguably be viewed as a culmination of Kandinsky’s artistic development at the Bauhaus in its powerful, yet spare, use of orderly form.

The circle had become increasingly important as a motif during Kandinsky’s years at the Bauhaus, figuring as a key compositional locus within some of his most significant works of this period, such as Yellow-Red-Blue (1925, Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris) and Several Circles (1926, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York). In 1930, Kandinsky outlined his reasons for his love of the circle: “Why does the circle fascinate me? It is…a single tension that carries countless tensions within it. The circle is the synthesis of the greatest oppositions. It combines the concentric and the excentric in a single form, and in balance. Of the three primary forms [triangle, square, circle], it points most clearly to the fourth dimension” (quoted in Will Grohmann, Wassily Kandinsky, Life and Work, Cologne, 1959, p. 188). The search for true non-objectivity in art—the rejection of material form in favor of more abstract and spiritual concepts—had been at the defining core of Kandinsky’s art since before World War I. Within Kreis und Rechteck, the artist’s search to attain the “fourth dimension” arguably approaches a peak in𝓀 this work’s elegant simplicity of form and color.