Untitled

Prints and Drawings

c. 1915

Wassily Kandinsky
Russian, 1866–1944

Filled with shifting forms and colors that push forward and recede, this watercolor appears completely abstract at first glance. But deeper examination reveals references to landscape, including a hilltop town illuminated by a deep red sun at upper left.

Forced by World War I to leave Germany, where he had lived since 1898, Vasily Kandinsky returned to Moscow in 1914. Restricted by limited space and financial resources, he concentrated on small-scale works primarily in watercolor, of which Untitled is a particularly fine example. It epitomizes the artist’s balance between representation and non-representation in this period.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Prints and Drawings

Artist: Vasily Kandinsky
Title: Untitled
Place: Russia (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: Made 1910–1920
Medium: Watercolor and touches of opaque watercolor on ivory wove paper
Inscriptions: Signed with stamp, recto, lower left, in black ink: “K” (in arc); inscribed verso, upper left, in graphite: “S” (?); upper center, in graphite: “Kandinsky” (by Nina Kandinsky)
Dimensions: 29 × 22.9 cm (11 7/16 × 9 1/16 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Richard and Mary L. Gray in memory of Buddy Mayer
Reference Number: 2018.753
Copyright: © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Vivian Endicott Barnett, Kandinsky Drawings: Catalogue Raisonné, vol. 1 (Philip Wilson, 2006), pp. 37 and 133, no. 12 (ill.).

Tokyo, Galerie Tokoro, Wassily Kandinsky: Exposition des aquarelles de 1910 à 1944, 1979, cat. 5.
Tokyo, Galerie Tokoro, Klee, Kandinsky, Miró, 1984, cat. 2 (traveled).
New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York Collects: Drawings and Watercolors 1900–1950, 1999, cat. 85.
Art Institute of Chicago, Gray Collection: Seven Centuries of Art, Sept. 25, 2010–Jan. 2, 2011, p. 124–25, and 197, cat. 85 (color ill.).
The Art Institute of Chicago, “Pure Drawing: Seven Centuries of Art from the Gray Collection”, January 25 - May 10, 2020, p. 142, GC 106, traveled to New York, The Morgan Library, February 19 - June 6, 2021, and Berkeley CA, UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, August 4 - November 28, 2021.

By descent to the artist’s wife, Nina Kandinsky (1899–1980), Neuilly-sur-Seine; Galerie Tokoro, Tokyo; private collection, from 1979; sold, Christie’s, New York, Nov. 10, 1994, lot 200, to Richard and Mary L. Gray and the Gray Collection Trust, Chicago; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2018.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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