Untitled, No. 629

Artist Vassily Kandinsky Russian, 1866–1944

Date1936

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensionscanvas: 130.5 x 81.4 cm (51 3/8 x 32 1/16 in.)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineGift from the Estate of Mrs. Aldus Chapin Higgins

Object number1970.123

Label TextA founding member of the German expressionist
group Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) and later a
professor at the Bauhaus art school, Kandinsky was
pivotal to German and Russian avant-garde art in
the early 1900s. His treatise of 1912, Concerning
the Spiritual in Art, advanced an aesthetic theory
that assigned spiritual and emotional
characteristics to colors and forms. Juxtaposing
warm yellows and cold blues, for example, could
produce corresponding “inner vibrations” in a
person’s soul. Kandinsky painted this work in his
later years in Paris, following his emigration from
Germany after the rise of Nazism. Here, he invents
new, fantastical forms that float freely, interacting
both dynamically and playfully.ProvenanceThe artist; sold by the Galerie Jeanne Bucher, Paris, France, to Aldus Higgins, July, 1938; gift to the museum from the estate of Mrs. Aldus Chapin Higgins, Worcester, MA, 1970.

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