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18

WASSILY KANDINSKY (1866-1944) untitled, (l'Amazone bleue) signed with monogram and dated "K/18" (...

Currency:USD Category:Everything Else / Other Start Price:NA Estimated At:27,500.00 - 275,000.00 USD
WASSILY KANDINSKY (1866-1944) untitled, (l'Amazone bleue) signed with monogram and dated K/18 (...
WASSILY KANDINSKY
(1866-1944)
untitled, (l'Amazone bleue)
signed with monogram
and dated "K/18" (lower left)
watercolor and Indian Ink on paper
12 1/2 x 9 3/4 in. (31.6 x 24.8 cm)
executed in 1918
Estimate: $225,000-$275,000 <p>Provenance
Private Collection, USSR
Karl Flinker, Paris (estate sale: Sotheby's, London, June 29, 1994, lot 185)
Acquired at the above sale by the present owner <p>Exhibited
Andros, Greece, Museum of Modern Art, Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation, Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944): aquarelles-dessins, July 8-September 18, 1989, p. 59 (illustrated) <p>Literature
Vivian Endicott Barnett, Kandinksy Watercolours, Catalogue Raisonné, 1900-1921, London, 1992, vol. 1, p. 427, no. 487 (illustrated)
Following the outbreak of World War I, Kandinsky left his beloved Moscow in late 1915 to join his companion, Gabriele Münter, in Stockholm. Deprived of canvases and oil paint, Kandinsky wrote of his increasing mastery of watercolor: "It is very precise work and I am, so to speak, learning the art of the jeweler. They prepare me for the large paintings which are slowly taking shape in my soul" (quoted in Vivian Endicott Barnett, Kandinsky, Watercolours and Drawings, Munich, 1992, p. 36). Untitled (l'amazone bleue) belongs to a series of 14 watercolors known as "bagatelles," which Kandinsky executed during the war years. According to Vivian Endicott Barnett, they included "both boldly abstract works and fanciful, figurative watercolours. The first bagatelles seem to be fairy tales, but the specific subjects defy interpretation..." (ibid.). The present work captures, in delicate tracings and jewel-like color, the gallant pose of a lady rider on horseback and the dreamy reverie of a romantic dandy kneeling opposite. The spare landscape, punctuated by puffy clouds, flowers, and sunbeams, belongs to fantasy, while the domes and minarets of the illustrious city in the near distance recall the scenes of Russian folklore that Kandinsky had produced over a decade earlier.
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