Galka Scheyer, Los Angeles (acquired from the artist on consignment in 1933)

Nina Kandinsky, Paris (Acquired from the above)

Galerie Maeght, Paris (acquired by 1955)

Adrien Maeght, Paris (acquired from the above by 1977)

Sale: Christie's, London, March 28, 1988, lot 33

Acquired by the present owner circa 1990

Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art, The Blue Four: Feininger, Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Paul Klee, 1933, no. 102

The Oakland Art Gallery & San Francisco Museum of Art, Paintings by Wassily Kandinsky, the "Old Master" of Abstract Art, 1935

San Francisco Museum of Art, Paintings by Wassily Kandinsky: A Survey 1923 to Present, 1939

New York, Nierendorf Gallery, Kandinsky, 1941, no. 64

Paris, Galerie Maeght, Kandinsky, Derrière le Miroir, 1953, no. 37

Kunsthalle Bern, Gesamtausstellung Wassily Kandinsky, 1955, no. 74 (catalogue no. 71)

New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; The Pasadena Art Museum; San Francisco Museum of Art; The Portland Museum of Art; San Antontio, Marion Koogler McNay Institute; Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center; The Baltimore Museum of Art; 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 48, illustrated in the catalogue (titled Connection)

Paris, Galerie Maeght, Kandinsky: Bauhaus de Dessau, 1927-1933, 1965, no. 51, illustrated in the catalogue (titled Liaison)

New York, Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, Kandinsky, The Bauhaus Years, 1966, no. 48, illustrated in the catalogue

St-Paul-de-Vence, Fondation Maeght, Centenary Exhibition, 1966, no. 77, illustrated in the catalogue

Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Wassily Kandinsky, Gemälde 1900-1944, 1970, no. 124, illustrated in the catalogue

Zurich, Galerie Maeght, Kandinsky, 1972, no. 36

Tokyo, The Seibu Museum of Art, Kandinsky, 1976, no. 28, illustrated in the catalogue

Munich, Haus der Kunst, Wassily Kandinsky 1866-1944, 1976-77, no. 77, illustrated in the catalogue

Madrid, Fundación Juan March, Kandinsky, 1978, no. 18, illustrated in the catalogue

The Artist's Handlist, vol. IV, no 579

Will Grohmann, Wassily Kandinsky, Life and Work, New York, 1958, no. 579, illustrated pl. 418

Hans K. Roethel & Jean K. Benjamin, Kandinsky, Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil-Paintings, Volume Two 1916-1944, Ithaca, New York, 1984, no. 1024, illustrated p. 923

Bindung, painted during Kandinsky's final months at the Bauhaus and one of only two works he painted in May of 1932, is a visual symphony of geometry and color.  The composition explores the dimensionality of space by layering color bands on top of opaque black forms to create an illusion of depth.  It is also a superb example of the artist's mature style, with its emphasis on individual shapes and their harmonious placement within a composition.  Kandinsky believed that particular arrangements of shapes triggered an "inner resonance" or "spiritual vibration," and could elicit from a viewer a powerful emotional response.  Jagged solid forms, arcs, grids, triangles and circles, whether overlapping or adjacent, were strictly non-representational and created to celebrate the beauty of form for form's sake. 

Kandinsky painted Bindung in May of 1932, only months before the Nati꧟onal Socialists closed the Bauhaus headquarters in Dessau.  The avant-garde art school briefly re-established itself as a private institution in Berlin by the end of the summer, but many of its left-leaning faculty could not escape the censure of the Gestapo and the school was ultimately shut down in October of 1932. Kandinsky's Russian origins in particular made him a target of the Gestapo's suspicion, and he feared for the future.  "If the Nazis or Communists should come," Kandinsky confided to his friend Galka Scheyer, "I'll be immediately without a job."  For the time being, he struggled to support himself amidst the dwindling German economy and looked towards the United States and France for potential purchasers of his pictures. 

Clark V. Poling has written about the extraordinary pictures that Kandinsky produced during this particularly tense period of his career: "At the conclusion of his Bauhaus period, Kandinsky painted a number of major pictures that brought together elements of his work of the previous several years and exploited the range of visual effects and evocative values of abstract geometry and color.... In his last two years in Germany Kandinsky developed and intensified these characteristics through a somewhat denser use of the elements" (C. V. Poling in Kandinsky: Russian and Bauhaus Years, 1915-1933 (exhibition catalogue), The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum♛, New York, 1983, pp. 81-82).

Kandinsky's years at Dessau were some of his most productive and his ar🦄tistic development was strongly influenced by his Bauhaus colleague Paul Klee, whose watercolors and oil paintings of these ye🐈ars demonstrate similar artistic predilections. When the Bauhaus was shut down officially at the end of 1932, Kandinsky left Germany for Paris. There he was influenced by the Surrealists and his oeuvre continued to evolve, but he held fast to his Bauhaus principles.