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Lot Essay
With its lyrical, abstract forms and delicate washes of colour, Ohne Titel embodies many of the key elements which defined Wassily Kandinsky’s approach to abstraction in the early 1920s, and represents his transition to a new style of painting which would occupy him throughout the rest of the decade. Believed to have been created as a study for the lost oil painting Weisses Bild, this work demonstrates the close connection between Kandinsky’s oils and watercolours during this period, as he worked across different media to develop his artistic theories. Executed during the artist’s first year of teaching at the Weimar Bauhaus, this richly detailed watercolour is, like many compositions from this period of Kandinsky’s career, an exercise in exploring the interdependent relationships that emerge from the careful orchestration of abstract shapes and colours. The painting is filled with a series of interlocking geometric and amorphous forms, outlined in strokes of varying thickness and highlighted with shades of vibrant colours.
Influenced by his encounters with the Constructivist artists Kazimir Malevich and Alexander Rodchenko during his years in Russia, Kandinsky began to introduce carefully angled, hard-edged geometrical elements to his work. This new approach is particularly evident in the bottom right hand corner of the present composition, where a series of sharp, precise lines and piercing, angular forms are created with the assistance of a compass and ruler. These elements offer a striking contrast to the more organic, freehand shapes visible throughout the rest of the painting, which retain a sense of spontaneity in their execution. Generating tensions and counter-tensions, these shapes hang together in a series of complex relationships and associations, lending Ohne Titel a vibrant internal energy and dynamism. In this way, the painting embodies Kandinsky’s aim ‘to create by pictorial means… pictures that as purely pictorial objects have their own, independent, intense life’ (Kandinsky, quoted in K. Lindsay & P. Vergo, eds., Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art, New York, 1994, p. 345).
Influenced by his encounters with the Constructivist artists Kazimir Malevich and Alexander Rodchenko during his years in Russia, Kandinsky began to introduce carefully angled, hard-edged geometrical elements to his work. This new approach is particularly evident in the bottom right hand corner of the present composition, where a series of sharp, precise lines and piercing, angular forms are created with the assistance of a compass and ruler. These elements offer a striking contrast to the more organic, freehand shapes visible throughout the rest of the painting, which retain a sense of spontaneity in their execution. Generating tensions and counter-tensions, these shapes hang together in a series of complex relationships and associations, lending Ohne Titel a vibrant internal energy and dynamism. In this way, the painting embodies Kandinsky’s aim ‘to create by pictorial means… pictures that as purely pictorial objects have their own, independent, intense life’ (Kandinsky, quoted in K. Lindsay & P. Vergo, eds., Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art, New York, 1994, p. 345).