D'une seule voix

By 1916 Kandinsky was back in Moscow, where the war had stranded him, painting almost no oils and working small, on paper. In May of that year a young woman called Nina Andreevskaya, who knew his nephew, telephoned him, and they talked at length before they ever met. He said afterwards that he had fallen in love with the voice. This sheet is dated September 1916 and its title is To a Voice. It is watercolour over pen and ink, about 23 centimetres high, small enough to hold in one hand. He married her in February 1917, in the last weeks before the Tsar's government fell. She outlived him by 36 years, and the sheet came to the museum in Paris through her bequest in 1981.