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Artist or Maker: 1866-1944
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Date: Executed in March 1916.
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Medium: watercolour and pen and brush and ink on paper
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Dimensions: 23 by 34.3cm.
9 by 13 1/2in.
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Provenance: PROPERTY OF THE VÅRSTAVI FOUNDATION, SWEDEN
Dr Poul Bjerre, Stockholm (a gift from the artist in March 1916)
Acquired from the above by the present owner
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Exhibited: Malmö, Konsthall and Stockholm, Moderna Museet, Kandinsky and Sweden: Malmö 1914 - Stockholm 1916, 1989-90, no. 33, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Dusseldorf, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen and Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie, Wassily Kandinsky. Kleine Freuden - Aquarelle und Zeichnungen, 1992, no. 48, illustrated in colour in the catalogue
Lidingö/Stockholm, Millesgården, Wassily Kandinsky - Gabriele Münter, 2001-02
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Literature: Poul Bjerre, Natural System of Dreams, 1936, illustrated
Poul Bjerre, The Healing Power of Dreams, Stockholm, 1982, illustrated
Jan Bärmark and Ingemar Nilsson, Poul Bjerre: Människosonen, Stockholm, 1983, illustrated in colour on the cover
Vivian Endicott Barnett, Kandinsky Watercolours, Catalogue Raisonné, 1900-1921, London, 1992, vol. I, p. 389, no. 447, illustrated; p. 392, illustrated in colour
John Landquist, Poul Bjerre. The Psychiatrist and Author, Stockholm, 2002, p. 88, illustrated
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Notes: This watercolour was executed in the last week of Kandinsky's stay in Sweden, where he spent two and a half months between 23rd December 1915 and 16th March 1916. He came to Sweden to meet with his companion Gabriele Münter (fig. 1), and during this time the dealer Carl Gummeson held an exhibition of his works. During his stay in Sweden, Kandinsky became close with Dr Bjerre, a psychiatrist who introduced Freud's theories into Sweden, and who claimed that the insight into the artist's abstract work, and his transition from representation to abstraction, helped him with his own research into the psychology of dreams. Dr Poul Bjerre and his wife Gunhild organised dinners and parties for Kandinsky and Münter, at which they were introduced to a large circle of intellectuals, artists and dealers. Among them was Ernst Norlind (1877-1952), a Swedish artist and activist with whom Kandinsky had established contact in 1913, and whose peace lectures he had attended. In expression of his thanks to Dr Bjerre, the artist gave him the present work, depicting Poul Bjerre standing in a pensive pose, and his friend Norlind riding a horse.
Vivian Endicott Barnett writes: 'Dr Poul Bjerre (1876-1964) was a well-known Swedish psychiatrist with whom Kandinsky established a friendship. On the reverse mount of the watercolour Dr Bjerre wrote: 'I got this picture from Kandinsky during his visit to Stockholm after the winter of 1916. He painted it there during the last week of his stay. I imagine that it epitomizes his impressions of Sweden. It is Ernst Norlind riding a horse. I brought them together and Kandinsky went to hear one of his peace lectures. The bird that I am staring at so intently should be interpreted psychoanalytically as man picking at himself. The lake could be any lake and the house could be any house. But one should note that Mrs Münter whom Kandinsky visited was at our country farm in September of the year before. It is perhaps our special lake that you also see and fields and woods with firs and such as you see from a train window. The round jam cake is the midnight sun and the curved rays are the northern lights - one supposes. On the left is Kölen and other high mountains on the border with Norway. This is simple. But what is meant by the big sugarloaf-like framing thing which is the immediate goal of Norlind's hunt? On this point the interpreters have very different opinions. Some are reminded of a tunnel; others of a symbolic road that goes upwards over the mountains to the sky. Still others think that it is a restricted and powerful synthesis of the Swedish pine woods, a kind of gigantic fir tree dominating the whole land. Written in Lantgården, on the second anniversary of the World War" (V. Endicott Barnett, op. cit., p. 389).
Stylistically, the present work is reminiscent of Kandinsky's Hinterglasmalerei or panting on glass, which he redescovered in Murnau in 1908. These paintings (figs. 2 & 3) reflect the artist's admiration for Russian and Bavarian 'primitive' or folk art, borrowing subjects from folk legends and fairy tales. Discussing the influence of these stories on Kandinsky, Hans K. Roethel wrote: "He was influenced by their content as well as their form, and his work at one time was full of subjects derived from or based on stories such as 'Ivan Tsarevitch' or by characters like Baba Jaga. [...] Other comparable works generally are not illustrations but are Kandinsky's original creations of what may be called visual fairy tales" (Hans K. Roethel and Jean K. Benjamin, Kandinsky, Oxford, 1979, p. 10). Rather than interpreting these stories too literally, the artist would freely combine existing motifs from different tales in his own way, adding to or subtracting from traditional fables. The present work is based on real characters that Kandinsky met while in Sweden, but he chose to represent them in an imaginary landscape, as fairy tale heroes, evoking imagery that surrounded Kandinsky during his youth in Russia.
Fig. 1, Wassily Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter in Sweden, 1916
Fig. 2, Wassily Kandinsky, Amazone in den Bergen, 1918, oil on glass, The Russian State Museum, St. Petersburg
Fig. 3, Wassily Kandinsky, Mit Offizier, 1917, oil on glass, Private Collection, Moscow
