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"Repetition is a potent means of heightening the inner vibration […] a source of elementary rhythm, which, in turn, is a means to the attainment of elementary harmony in every form of art.”
—Wassily Kandinsky
With its striking lyrical precision characterized by bold color and the rhythmic repetition and variation of geometric forms, Fliessend is a lively expression of the radically non-representational directions in which Wassily Kandinsky pushed painting in the 1920s and 1930s. Executed in 1931, the work represents a key moment in the artist’s career, drawing together the core formal motifs and theoretical preoccupations that he had refined over his years as a master at the Bauhaus before the ascendancy of the Third Reich and his move to Paris two years later that ushered in a new phase in his work.A Kind of Blue
"Almost without exception, blue refers to the domain of abstraction and immateriality."
—Wassily KandinskySet against a background of rich, midnight blues and vibrantly animated by a series of alternating triangular shapes, broad arcs, slim dash lines, and small, circular forms, the present work shares the visual vocabulary and compositional complexity of Kandinsky’s most iconic works. Within Fliessend’s sharply delineated geometric forms, the artist explored more subtle modulations of surface texture and tone, the counterpoint of denser and more diffused passages creating a strikingly spatial and even musical effect as motifs emerge and recede across the composition. In this respect, the painting belongs to a small but significant group of works from Kandinsky’s last years at the Dessau Bauhaus which combined his earlier examinations into the spiritual dimension of color and its affects with the spatial possibilities between these more strictly geometric forms. As with several other works from this group including Sanfter Nachdruck and Leicht Berührt, both at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the title of the present work is directly borrowed from musical terminology. Fliessend corresponds to the English term “flowing” notably used in Austrian composer Anton Webern’s Bagatelles and in Arnold Schoenberg’s music notation.
Wassily Kandinsky, Soft Pressure, 1931. Museum of Modern Art, New York, Image: © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY, Artwork: © 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, ParisGeometry, Abstraction, and the Bauhaus
Like many European artists of his generation, Kandinsky became increasingly interested in the mathematical precision and universality of geometry, and of the foundational possibilities that it presented for a radically new artistic language freed from directly representational concerns. Deftly transfusing the Constructivist lessons he had absorbed from the likes of Kazimir Malevich during his return to Russia between 1915 and 1921 into the ethos of interdisciplinarity that characterized life at the Staatliches Bauhaus, Kandinsky transitioned away from “the expressionistic elements of his pre-war Compositions toward a more universal, objective idiom.”i
In the playful interactions established between a deliberately restricted repertoire of forms, Fliessend also records the influence of Kandinsky’s close friend and fellow Bauhaus master Paul Klee, with whom the artist reunited when he took up his position at the school alongside his old friend in 1922. While Klee’s work from this period remained more closely tied to the representational, the visual resonance between certain recurring shapes and compositional elements testifies to their close working practices, and to a broader culture of creative and intellectual exchange encouraged at the Bauhaus.
![[left] Kazimir Malevich, Dynamic Suprematism, 1915 or 1916, Tate Collection, London [right] Paul Klee, Red Balloon, 1922, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Artwork: © 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York](https://phillips.vo.llnwd.net/v1/web_dev/lot-component/162438 Fig 2 and 3_8427b0c0-d130-4041-895c-1c0c44df0e5e.png)
[left] Kazimir Malevich, Dynamic Suprematism, 1915 or 1916, Tate Collection, London [right] Paul Klee, Red Balloon, 1922, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Artwork: © 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New YorkSuccessfully synthesizing these various elements, by 1923 Kandinsky had “consolidated the geometric tendencies that had been developing in his art from 1919 and brought to the fore the schematic construction and other theoretical principles he emphasized in his teaching at the school.”ii Presenting a masterful balance of color, rhythm, and harmonizing geometries with organic elements, Fliessend is an exuberant expression of Kandinsky's maturation in this tendency, and what celebrated critic and art historian Will Grohmann aptly described as the “incomparable richness” of these Dessau years.
"The impact of an acute angel of a triangle on a circle produces an effect no less powerful than the finger of God touching the finger of Adam in Michelangelo."
—Wassily KandinskyWithin the new and increasingly complex compositional arrangements that characterize Kandinsky’s Bauhaus period, the circle and triangle were particularly privileged as “the two primary, most strongly contrasting plane figures.”iii In a letter to Grohmann, Kandinsky elaborated on this prevailing geometric logic. Describing the circle as a link to the cosmic, he emphasized its simultaneity and versatility: at once stable and unstable, loud and soft, precise and variable, the circle becomes “the synthesis of the greatest oppositions,” combining “the concentric and the eccentric in a single form, and in balance.”iv
In a powerful visualization of the “flowing” qualities suggested by the title, the present work develops these formal relationships, the triangle’s stability and repeated sense of upward momentum balanced and counterpointed by the chromatic brilliance and seeming weightlessness of the small circular forms. Harmonious and serenely ordered, the composition nevertheless possesses a sense of remarkable fluidity. The pictorial elements of geometric form, subtle shifts in surface textures, and exchanges between warmer and cooler colors all dynamically interact, responding to one another in a complex, polyphonic arrangement. It not only prefigures the rhythmic, all-over qualities that would define Abstract Expressionism, but speaks to a musical legacy of syncopated rhythms, atonality, and developing variation that runs across the 20th century and beyond.
i Magdalena Dabrowski, Kandinsky Compositions, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1995, p. 46.
ii C. V. Poling, Kandinsky: Russian and Bauhaus Years, 1915 – 1933, exh. cat., The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1983, p. 49.
iii Wassily Kandinsky, quoted in ibid., p. 52.
iv Wassily Kandinsky, quoted in Will Grohmann, Wassily Kandinsky: Life and Work, 1958, New York, p. 188.Provenance
Otto Gerson, New York
Mrs. E.L. Froelicher, New York
Mr. and Mrs. Samuel J. Holtzman, Baltimore
Private Collection, Baltimore (by descent by 1986)
Hôtel Drouot, Paris, June 26, 2006, lot 258
Acquired at the above sale by the present ownerExhibited
London, April 1937
New York, Nierendorf Gallery, Kandinsky, A Retrospective View, October 1937
New York, Nierendorf Gallery, Kandinsky, March 1941, no. 19, n.p.
New York, Nierendorf Gallery, Kandinsky, A Retrospective Show, December 8, 1942 - February 1943, no. 12Literature
Artist’s Handlist IV, no. 548
Will Grohmann, Wassily Kandinsky: Life and Work, New York, 1958, pp. 339, 382 (illustrated, p. 392)
Hans K. Roethel and Jean K. Benjamin, Kandinsky. Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil-Paintings Volume Two 1960-1944, London, 1984, no. 994, p. 898 (illustrated)
24
Fliessend
signed with the artist’s monogram and dated "31" lower left; signed with the artist's monogram, titled and dated "1931 "Fliessend."" on the reverse
oil on board
27 1/2 x 23 1/2 in. (69.9 x 59.7 cm)
Executed in 1931.
Estimate
$2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Amanda Lo Iacono
New York Head of Department & Head of Auctions
+1 212 940 1278
aloiacono@phillips.com
20th Century & Contemporary Art Evening Sale
New York Auction 17 November 2021
1
Shara Hughes
Inside Outside
Estimate $250,000 - 350,000
Sold for $1,482,000
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2
Jadé Fadojutimi
My Umbrella Has A Nourishing Disguise
Estimate $150,000 - 200,000
Sold for $877,000
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3
Ewa Juszkiewicz
Girl in Blue
Estimate $80,000 - 120,000
Sold for $730,800
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4
Kwesi Botchway
Green Sofa
Estimate $30,000 - 50,000
Sold for $214,200
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5
Titus Kaphar
Fade With Time
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $816,500
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6
David Hammons
Puzzling Times
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $877,000
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7
Raymond Pettibon
No Title (Let him come...)
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $3,418,000
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8
Joan Mitchell
Untitled
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $11,870,000
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9
Georgia O'Keeffe
Crab’s Claw Ginger Hawaii
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $7,748,000
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10
Alexander Calder
White Moon
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $4,628,000
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11
Cecily Brown
Untitled
Estimate $3,500,000 - 4,500,000
Sold for $6,140,500
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12
Willem de Kooning
Composition
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
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13
Rudolf Stingel
Untitled
Estimate $1,800,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $2,692,000
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14
This lot is no longer available.
15
Amy Sherald
Welfare Queen
Estimate $1,200,000 - 1,800,000
Sold for $3,902,000
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16
Francis Bacon
'Pope with Owls'
Estimate $35,000,000 - 45,000,000
Sold for $33,000,000
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17
Luc Tuymans
Wallpaper
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,000,000
Sold for $1,250,000
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18
Pierre Bonnard
Panier de fruit
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
Sold for $4,991,000
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19
Honor Titus
Linden Blvd Jazz Radio
Estimate $30,000 - 50,000
Sold for $163,800
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20
Matthew Wong
Time After Time
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,482,000
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21
Avery Singer
European Ego Ideal
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $4,023,000
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22
Mark Tansey
Garden
Estimate $700,000 - 1,000,000
Sold for $2,934,000
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23
KAWS
THE WAY HE KNOWS
Estimate $850,000 - 1,000,000
Sold for $1,542,500
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24
Wassily Kandinsky
Fliessend
Estimate $2,000,000 - 3,000,000
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25
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Untitled (from Famous Negro Athlete Series)
Estimate $750,000 - 1,100,000
Sold for $2,450,000
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26
Peter Saul
Ice Box #3
Estimate $350,000 - 450,000
Sold for $441,000
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27
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Untitled (The Door)
Estimate $6,000,000 - 8,000,000
Sold for $8,549,500
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28
Emily Mae Smith
Feast and Famine
Estimate $200,000 - 300,000
Sold for $1,361,000
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29
Gerhard Richter
Weiß (White)
Estimate $4,000,000 - 6,000,000
Sold for $5,717,000
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30
Robert Ryman
Series #25 (White)
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $1,421,500
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31
Frank Stella
Double Concentric Square
Estimate $1,500,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $1,845,000
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32
Carmen Herrera
Amarillo y Negro
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $630,000
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33
Andy Warhol
The Last Supper/Be a Somebody with a Body
Estimate $6,000,000 - 8,000,000
Sold for $6,806,000
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34
Christopher Wool
Blue Fool
Estimate $800,000 - 1,200,000
Sold for $1,179,500
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35
This lot is no longer available.
36
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
Six PM, Malaga
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $567,000
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37
Mickalene Thomas
Portrait of Qusuquzah #5
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $504,000
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38
Mike Kelley
Memory Ware Flat #3
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $1,179,500
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39
George Condo
Collision Course
Estimate $1,800,000 - 2,500,000
Sold for $2,450,000
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40
Bruce Nauman
Untitled (from Fifteen Pairs of Hands)
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $983,000
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41
David Hammons
Untitled
Estimate $1,000,000 - 1,500,000
Sold for $3,660,000
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42
Nicolas Party
Houses
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $1,724,000
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43
Hurvin Anderson
Country Club—Mixed Doubles
Estimate $400,000 - 600,000
Sold for $604,800
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44
Max Ernst
Ohne Titel (les hommes ne le sauront jamais)
Estimate $500,000 - 700,000
Sold for $504,000
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45
Max Ernst
Kachina, le chien de Peggy Guggenheim
Estimate $280,000 - 350,000
Sold for $277,200
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46
Cy Twombly
Untitled
Estimate $600,000 - 800,000
Sold for $786,250
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47
Reggie Burrows Hodges
On the Verge: Green
Estimate $100,000 - 150,000
Sold for $567,000
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48
Max Ernst
Portrait de Ernst Wilhelm Leberecht Tempel
Estimate $200,000 - 300,000
Sold for $176,400
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