冷漠的疏离

In August 1932 the regional parliament of Anhalt voted to shut the Bauhaus at Dessau, where Kandinsky had taught since the school moved there in 1925. It closed at the end of September and reopened in Berlin that autumn in a disused telephone factory, running on fees, and he went with it. He made this in that year, on cardboard rather than canvas, roughly 42 centimetres each way, in oil mixed with tempera and ink. The title he gave it in German was Kuhle Entfernung, cool distance. He kept a handwritten list of his own output, numbered and dated as he went, which is why even a small board like this one can be placed exactly. It passed to the French state in 1981 under his widow's will, and since 2008 it has been on deposit in Strasbourg rather than hanging in Paris.