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8 Pointille, 1935 Signed with monogram and dated 'VK 35' lower left; inscribed verso 'N. 559/1935 Pointille' Gouache on black card laid down on cardboard 19 1 / 8 x 13 1 / 4 in, 48.4 x 33.5 cm Provenance J. B. Neumann, New York (acquired in November 1935) Nierendorf Gallery, New York (by July 1942) Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (by 1945) Parke-Bernet, New York, 20 October 1971, lot 55 Private Collection, New York Exhibitions Paris, Cahiers d'Art, Kandinsky: peintures de toutes les époques, aquarelles et dessins, 23 May – 3 June 1935 Chicago, Art Institute, The Fifteenth International Exhibition of Water Colors, 12 March – 10 May 1936, no.120 Boston, The Institute of Modern Art, Contemporary German Art, 2 November – 9 December 1939, no.24 Milan, Prato, and Cortina d'Ampezzo, Farsettiarte, Soutine Kisling Utrillo e la Parigi di Montparnasse, 26 December 2003 – 6 January 2004, no.22 (illus. in colour) Literature Vivian Endicott Barnett, Kandinsky Watercolours. Catalogue Raisonné, 1922 – 1944, vol. II, Sotheby's Publications / Electa, 1994, p.412, no.1188 Kandinsky, 'Toile vide', Cahiers d'art, 10e année, no.5-6, 1935, p.118 illus. VASSILY KANDINSKY 1866-1944 The sombre palette of Pointille marks the dramatic shift in Wassily Kandinsky's practice after fleeing Nazi Germany in 1933. Establishing his studio in the Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, Kandinsky wrote to the German art critic Will Grohmann of his hope that the conflict in Europe was simply a passing aberration, 'We are not leaving Germany for good…I couldn't do that, my roots are too deep in German soil'. However, just a few years later in 1937, 57 works by Kandinsky were removed from German museums to be displayed in the infamous Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich. The ominous forms that loom across the inky black sky of Pointille are indicative of Kandinsky's uneasy response to these growing tensions in Europe ahead of the Second World War. In Paris, Kandinsky increasingly adopted the biomorphic forms of the Paris-based Surrealists such as Joan Miró and Jean Arp into his style of abstraction. The meticulous biological shapes in Pointille also refer to Kandinsky's underlying interest in the organic sciences, including zoology, botany and embryology. With his own vast collection of encyclopaedias and scientific journals, Kandinsky had cut and mounted hundreds of illustrations of miniscule creatures, insects and embryos on the walls of his home in Munich. Kandinsky was fascinated by the 'hidden soul' of these organisms and the coherence between the micro and macro-cosmic.