Small Worlds I

Kandinsky had firm views on what each printing technique was for. In 1922 he brought out a portfolio of 12 small prints in three techniques, and in his writings he described them almost in social terms. Drypoint, which yields only a limited number of good impressions, was the aristocratic one. Lithography, drawn on stone and printable almost without limit, was the most painterly and the most democratic, and he called it the medium of his time. This sheet is a lithograph, printed by von Reineck & Klein, a commercial firm in Weimar, the town where the new German republic had adopted its constitution three years earlier. Flat blue, yellow, red and green lie side by side much as paint would, cut through by one long blue diagonal and a scatter of black lines. In the lower left corner, drawn into the stone, are his monogram and the year, 22.