Composition (1944)

In 1944 Kandinsky was living at Neuilly, on the edge of occupied Paris, and this small sheet was his contribution to a book being prepared in Amsterdam, another occupied city. The album, whose French title promises 11 pictures and seven poems, was printed by the Amsterdam firm of J. F. Duwaer. Its director, Frans Duwaer, had spent the war forging identity cards for the Dutch resistance at his printing works. He was arrested in June 1944 and shot two days later in the dunes at Overveen. Kandinsky died that December. Printing was finished in November 1945. The colophon says the artist composed this stencil design for the edition alone, and only 75 copies carry it, coloured in gouache. This one is number five of 30 set aside outside the trade, and it came to the Pompidou in 1981 with the bequest of his widow, Nina.