Two Squares

On 1 August 1930 the mayor of Dessau dismissed the director of the Bauhaus, Hannes Meyer, for what the city called communist machinations. Kandinsky, who had taught at the school since 1922, was among those who pressed for the dismissal, and Mies van der Rohe took over. This dates from that same year. It is tempera on cardboard, about 33 centimetres tall, with a pink square set high on the left and a smaller blue one low on the right. Kandinsky kept his own numbered list of what he made, and the back of the board still carries the note VK 30 in his hand. The painting reached Paris only after his death, in the 1981 bequest of his widow Nina, and it still sits in the painted wooden frame he made for it.