Painting on Light Ground

In August 1914 Kandinsky was a Russian citizen living in Munich, and when the war began he had to leave Germany within days. He went first to Switzerland, then home to Moscow, and for well over a year he painted no oils at all. This canvas ended that silence. He made it in Sweden, during a winter stay in Stockholm across 1915 and 1916 built around an exhibition of his work at the Gummesons gallery, where he also saw the painter Gabriele Münter, his companion of 12 years, for the last time. The shapes float on a pale ground with their outlines left deliberately open. Nina Andreevskaya, whom he met in Moscow later that year and married in 1917, kept the painting until 1976, when she gave it to the French state. It hangs today in Strasbourg, on deposit from the national collection in Paris.