Kallmünz - Regentag

Name: WASSILY KANDINSKY (1866-1944)
Brand: Kallmünz - Regentag
Price: 130000.00 GBP
Availability: SoldOut

Price Realised GBP 162,500

Estimate

GBP 150,000 - GBP 200,000

Closed: 14 Jul 2020

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WASSILY KANDINSKY (1866-1944)

Kallmünz - Regentag

Price Realised GBP 162,500

Closed: 14 Jul 2020

Price Realised GBP 162,500

Closed: 14 Jul 2020

Details Lot Essay Related Articles More from

WASSILY KANDINSKY (1866-1944)
Kallmünz - Regentag
signed 'KANDINSKY' (lower right)
oil on canvasboard
9¹⁄₂ x 13 in. (24.2 x 33 cm.)
Painted in Kallmünz in 1903

Gabriele Münter, Munich.
Otto Stangl, Munich.
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, by whom acquired from the above in 1950; sale, Sotheby's, London, 30 June 1964, lot 1.
Galerie Beyeler, Basel (no. 4138), by whom acquired at the above sale.
Finarte, Milan, by whom acquired from the above on 15 December 1965.
Falck collection, Milan.
Private collection, Europe, a gift from the above in the 1970s and thence by descent; sale, Christie's, London, 22 June 2005, lot 227.
Anon. sale, Sotheby's New York, 9 May 2007, lot 352.
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner.

The artist's handlist, vol. I, no. 59.
W. Grohmann, Wassily Kandinsky: Leben und Werk, Cologne, 1958, no. 549, p. 344 (illustrated p. 395; dated '1904' and with incorrect medium).
H.K. Roethel & J.K. Benjamin, Kandinsky, Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil-Paintings, vol. I, 1900-1915, London, 1982, no. 90, p. 115 (illustrated).

London, Tate Gallery, 45 oeuvres de Kandinsky provenant du Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York, April - May 1957, no. 59, n.p.; this exhibition later travelled to Brussels, Palais des Beaux Arts, May - June 1957; Paris, Musée National d'Art Moderne, November 1957 - February 1958; Lyon, Palais Saint-Pierre; Oslo, Kunstnernes Hus; and Rome, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna.
Toronto, The Art Gallery, 1959, no. 11.

Please note this lot is the property of a consumer. See H1 of the Conditions of Sale.

Please note the starting bid of this lot is now £130,000

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Lot Essay

‘You saw in Kallmünz how I paint. So I do everything that I it is ready within me and it find expression.’ (W. Kandinsky, letter to G. Münter, Aug 10 1904, quoted in exh. cat., The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1982, p. 83)

In June 1903, Wassily Kandinsky set out on a painting trip to the small picturesque village of Kallmünz in north-eastern Bavaria, accompanied by a group of his Phalanx students. Spending their days working Kandinsky produced a number of small-format oil studies of Kallmünz and its environs, focusing his eye on views of the medieval castle, open fields, rolling hills and, as seen in the colourful old houses that populated its winding streets.

Created using thick, visceral strokes of pigment, these compositions reveal the important relationship between Kandinsky's work of this period and the paintings of Vincent van Gogh, which he had greatly admired at the 1903 Munich Secession. This influence is particularly notable in Kandinsky's remarkable use of the palette knife in the present composition, which allowed him to achieve a greater freedom in his handling of paint, building the scene through heavily impastoed layers and coarse strokes of pigment. There is also a new sense of immediacy and simplicity in Kandinsky’s approach to colour at this time, with non-naturalistic tones and pastel hues making their way into his palette, their presence hinting towards the bold approach to form and colour that would characterise his later abstractions.

Initially held in the collection of Gabriele Münter, Munich, the artist's significant partner in art and life during his early career, from whom passing through the hands of Otto Stangl, Munich and then to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York and quickly retrieved by Galerie Beyeler, Basel in 1964, the distinguished early provenance of the present work reinforces its quality as a true highlight from this period.