Formes noires sur blanc

When Kandinsky reached Paris at the end of 1933, the man who opened doors for him was Christian Zervos, publisher of the art magazine Cahiers d'art. In May and June 1934 Zervos turned his own offices at 14 rue du Dragon into a gallery for a Kandinsky show, the painter's introduction to the Paris public. This canvas comes from that moment, and Kandinsky dedicated it to Zervos's wife, Yvonne. It also catches him leaving the circles and hard angles of his Bauhaus years for soft, cell-like shapes, which the museum ties to magnified photographs of cells and living tissue. Zervos described the picture as a return to extreme simplicity, a world of full forms caught in a whirlwind that holds them tightly grouped. It stayed in the couple's collection, which Christian Zervos left to the Burgundian town of Vézelay, and it hangs there today in the museum that carries their name.