Unfinished Painting

Two small pictures on cardboard in the Pompidou's collection share the same plain title, Unfinished Painting, and both come from 1944, the year Kandinsky died. The museum prints this one's date in square brackets, the cataloguer's sign that the year is inferred rather than written on the work. It is laid out on a black ground in three columns, almost like a page. In the middle stands a tall white grid, close to a ladder, with a dark blue disc near the top. On the left, small creatures and signs are filled with pink, violet, yellow and green. On the right the colour runs out. Next to a large violet form shaped a little like a fish, three hooded shapes, a few bent strokes like legs and a row of pebble-like forms along the bottom are still only white outlines around the dark.