椭圆2号

1925 was the year the Bauhaus was pushed out of Weimar. Elections in Thuringia had gone to the right, the school's funding was cut in half, and its masters dissolved it rather than accept the terms they were offered. The industrial town of Dessau took them in, and the staff spent the year packing, moving and waiting for buildings that were not finished. Kandinsky painted this in the middle of that. It is small, about 34 centimetres high, oil on a piece of cardboard cut into an oval, and the shape of the support runs the picture. Circles, bars and triangles are fitted to the curve instead of sitting square to a frame. He was working at the time on Point and Line to Plane, published the following year, which argues that the boundary of a surface changes everything placed inside it.