Around the Circle

The dates on this canvas are May to August 1940. The German offensive in the west opened on 10 May and the army was in Paris on 14 June. Kandinsky was 73 and had held French citizenship for barely a year. He and his wife left Neuilly for Cauterets in the Pyrenees, spent about two months there, and came back to a suburb under occupation. This is what he was painting through it. The creatures drifting across the surface come out of scientific illustration, since he had been collecting plates from journals, embryos, larvae, sea organisms, and took shapes straight from them. Near the middle there is a small flight of steps that leads nowhere.