Kandinsky - Several Circles

Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) discovered painting quite late. An expressionist and member of the Blaue Reiter, his forms, large flat surfaces animated by graphics, gradually lost their connection with reality without, however, becoming completely abstract.

In 1922, Kandinsky joined the Bauhaus University in Weimar, where he found an optimal environment in which to pursue his art. Originally based on a Germanic, expressionist approach to art making, the Bauhaus aesthetic came to reflect constructivist concerns and styles that by the mid-1920s had become international. While there, Kandinsky continued his research into the correspondence between color and form and their psychological and spiritual effects. The importance of circles foreshadowed the dominant role they would play in many later works, culminating in his cosmic, harmonious image of "Several Circles." "The circle," Kandinsky asserted, "is the synthesis of the greatest oppositions. It combines the concentric and the eccentric in a single, balanced form. Of the three primary forms, it points most clearly to the fourth dimension."

Several Circles, 1926 (Guggenheim, New York)

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