White Sharpness

In April 1930 a new group called Cercle et Carré, filled a Paris gallery with abstract work by more than 40 artists, Piet Mondrian and Kandinsky among them. That same month the Dutch artist Theo van Doesburg launched a rival group with a stricter programme. Kandinsky, then teaching at the Bauhaus in Dessau, made this picture the same year. A tall white triangle stands on a blue so dark it reads almost black, its surface grainy and speckled. Two green crescents hang to the right, a small pink square sits high in the corner, and below the triangle is a white rectangle cut by a diagonal. The support is cardboard, nearly 87 centimetres tall. The Rotterdam museum bought it in 1964, and in 2024 lent it to an exhibition pairing him with the Swedish painter Hilma af Klint.