On the Points

Kandinsky wrote the title in German on the back of the canvas, Auf Spitzen, which means on the points, or on tiptoe. In French the picture goes by Sur les pointes, the phrase for a ballerina up on the tips of her toes. The shapes stand the same way. A fan of long triangles rises, narrow end down, from a base of three grey lines, carrying circles and smaller triangles up into a pale field. He painted it in 1928, while teaching at the Bauhaus in Dessau, on a large square canvas 140 centimetres a side. The Centre Pompidou, which owns it, notes that he handled the oil colour almost like watercolour, and that is much of why nothing here looks heavy. One small orange square sits apart near the lower right, the only shape of its kind. His monogram and the date, VK 28, are in the lower left corner.