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Entwurf zu 'Gr쳌ner Rand' signed with the artist's monogram and dated '19' (lower left) watercolour, India ink and pencil on paper 10 1/8 x 13 1/8in. (25.6 x 33.4cm.) Executed in 1919 PROVENANCE Nina Kandinsky, Paris. Galerie Flinker, Paris, 1977. William Louis-Dreyfus, New York; acquired from the above in 1978. Crane Kalman Gallery, London. LITERATURE The Artist's Handlist, watercolours, '1919, no. 11, Le bord vert'. V. Endicott Barnett, Kandinsky Watercolours, catalogue raisonn‚, vol I, 1900-1921, New York, 1992, no. 519 (illustrated p. 459 and in colour p. 458). W. Grohmann, Wassily Kandinsky: Life and Work, London, 1959, no. 708 (illustrated p. 408). D. Vallier, 'Kandinsky et l'aquarelle', in L'Oeil, no. 263, June 1977, pp. 26-29. K. C. Lindsay, 'Kandinsky's Method and Contemporary Criticism', Magazine of Art, vol. 45, no. 8, Dec. 1952, pp. 355-361. V. E. Barnett, A. Zweite, Kandinsky. Kleine Freuden. Aquarelle und Zeichnungen, Munich, 1992, no. 65 (illustrated in colour p. 107). EXHIBITION Stockholm, Gummesons Konsthandel, Kandinsky, Oct. 1922, no. 7. Berlin, Galerie Goldschmidt-Wallerstein, Kandinsky, April-June 1922. Hanover, Kestner-Gesellschaft e. V., Feb.-March 1923. Erfurt, Angermuseum, Kunstverein, Wassily Kandinsky, Jan. 1925. Dresden, Galerie Arnold (Ludwig Gutbier), Kandinsky: Jubil„ums-Ausstellung zum 60. Geburtstage, Oct.-Nov. 1926, no. 54. Paris, Galerie Maeght, Kandinsky: p‚riode dramatique 1910-1920, June-Aug. 1955, no. 22. Paris, Galerie Maeght, Kandinsky: Aquarelles et gouaches. Collection priv‚e de Madame W. Kandinsky, Nov. 1957, no. 10. Humlebaek (Denmark), Louisiana Museum, Klee-Kandinsky, Oct. 1971- Jan. 1972, no. 48. Basle, Galerie Beyeler, Kandinsky: Aquarelle und Zeichnungen, June-July 1972, no. 12, (illustrated in colour). Charleroi, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Wassily Kandinsky: r‚trospective, Jan.-March 1972, no. 57. Cologne, Galerie Bargera, Wassily Kandinsky, 1866-1944: Gouachen, Aquarelle, ™lbilder und Zeichnungen, April-June 1973, no. 13. Bielefeld, Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Wassily Kandinsky: Aquarelle Gouachen, Zeichnungen, Sept.-Nov. 1973, no. 16; This exhibition later travelled to Munich, St„dische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Dec. 1973-Jan. 1974, no. 16. Paris, Galerie Karl Flinker, Kandinsky: 82 oeuvres sur papier de 1902 … 1933, May-July 1977, no. 6 (illustrated in colour). Dusseldorf, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein Westfalen, Wassily Kandinsky Aquarelle und Zeichnungen, March-May 1992, no. 65; This exhibition later travelled to Stuttgart, Staatgalerie Stuttgart, May-Aug. 1992, no. 65. London, The Royal Academy of Art, Kandinsky Watercolours and Works on Paper, April-July 1999, no. 53. NOTES As its title suggests, Entwurf zu Gr쳌ner Rand (Study for "Green Border") is a fully realized composition that served as the basis for the oil painting Gr쳌ner Rand which Kandinsky completed in 1920. A rare and important watercolour deriving from a period of transition for the artist, it was painted in Moscow in late 1919 during the height of the fervour following the October Revolution of 1917. Kandinsky had returned to Russia in 1915 where he had been temporarily amazed by the radical developments amongst the avant-garde made by artists like Kasimir Malevich and Vladimir Tatlin. This return to his homeland prompted a re-evaluation of the more tentative steps he had made towards complete abstraction in his own work and for a brief period prompted a change in his style. In 1915 Kandinsky recorded the painting of no oil paintings in his handlist. Moving to Sweden in 1916 to be with Gabrielle M쳌nter, Kandinsky temporarily fell back on his roots painting a series of paintings, dubbed Bagatelles by M쳌nter, that reflected folk art and the fairy-tale landscapes of his early career. Over the next few years Kandinsky's life underwent a radical and fundamental change. In 1917 he broke finally with M쳌nter and married Nina with whom he had a son, Vsevolod. Vsevolod was tragically to die of gastro-enteritis less than three years later. After the revolutionary victory of the Bolsheviks Kandinsky became deeply involved in attempting to advance the liberal attitude of the new government into official policy and preoccupied with the advancement of this cause and his new family, he painted hardly any works between 1917 and July 1919. Entwurf zu Gr쳌ner Rand belongs to a group of new works from the period immediately following this upheaval in the practice of his art. Although seemingly similar his earlier abstracted style that he was developing shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, it is a work that also breaks new ground and reflects a number of entirely new motifs and developments in Kandinsky's oeuvre. Foremost among these is the use of the 'border' mentioned in the title. As Will Grohmann has observed, this compositional motif was used in several paintings of the period, as "a means of balancing the strict rectangular surface of the canvas with the pictorial construction." ( Wassily Kandinsky: Life and Work, Will Grohmann, London, 1959, p. 166.) As Grohmann points out, this motif receives its fullest treatment in this watercolour before shortly afterwards disappearing. The heavy use of a green surround in Entwurf zu Gr쳌ner Rand and in the resulting oil not only generates a homogeneity to the composition but also has a radical effect on transforming the traditional landscape format of Kandinsky's work into a kind of peep-hole vision of another world. Seeming to defy gravity, the effect of Kandinsky's use of a border in these paintings is to generate a new sense of space that not only conjures a cosmic atmosphere but also bestows his forms with a new sense of independence from one another. Entwurf zu Gr쳌ner Rand is not an entirely abstract work, within its green border it maintains much of the feel and structure of a landscape composition and indeed, at its centre, reveals the recognisable though abstracted forms of a church atop a mountain. At the same time, as with other paintings in this small but important group of pictures,( Rote Umrandung or Weisses Oval for example) it is clear from this work that Kandinsky's forms at this time were developing a new autonomy that would lead increasingly to the new geometry of his work over the next two years.