Vassily and Nina Kandinsky decided to move to Paris in 1934, after the Nazis closed permanently the Bauhaus in Berlin in July 1933. They already had some connections with Paris and, since they thought it was “the centre of the art world”, the decision to move there was clear to them. It is Marcel Duchamp that will find them their apartment in Neuilly sur Seine.

Even if, at the beginning, he planned to stay in Paris for only one year and then return to Germany, Kandinsky quickly changed his mind: in 1935, he wrote to his friend and art historian Will Grohmann, “I’ve already become a real Parisian”[1].

In 1940, one year after having obtained French citizenship, the nazis’ occupation obliged him and his wife, Nina, to move to the Hautes-Pyrenes region.

In 1941, he was tempted to quit France to emigrate to the United States. As other artists, his and Nina’s names figured in the list of the Emergency Rescue Committee[2], but Kandinsky felt too old to emigrate. The years of the war were particularly sad for him. Even if he continued to exhibit in Paris, the relationships with his overseas dealers became more and more complicated. Censorship made it increasingly difficult to exchange letters with his friends; Kandinsky found himself isolated.

The sadness of this period does not impact the artist's imagery, which continues to create vibrant and colorful compositions. Untitled, is one of the 35 gouaches and watercolors that Kandinsky made in 1941. The black background, typical of his production since the late 1930s, does not denote a sombre mood. The color palette acquires a new luminosity and softness in his Parisian period.

His friend and art critic Christian Zervos, wrote about his French period:

« The influence of nature on Kandinsky's work was never more evident than in the canvases he painted in Paris. The atmosphere, the light, the lightness of the Ile-de-France sky transformed the expression of his work. »[3]

In Composition n°719/1941, these new colors, set against a black background, highlight even more the biomorphic forms and constellations that characterize Kandinsky's French work. Pastel colors emphasize embryonic forms emerging from the darkness: Composition n° 719/1941 makes us think of a primordial soup and conveys a primitive spirituality.

With this gouache, Kandinsky makes it clearer to us that “To create an artwork, is to create a world.” [4] The pioneer of abstract art, unlike the critics, never thought of abstractionism as an extremely rational and geometric art, but rather a spiritual art, which is first and foremost a “pulse of life”, and his French period is a great synthesis of his philosophy.

[1] Quoted in Vassily Kandinsky. Retrospective, Fondation Maeght, 4 July – 10 October 2001, p. 193

[2] American Rescue Center in Marseille, founded in the United States by German emigrates such as Thomas Mann or Albert Einstein. The organization hired the anti-nazi journalist Varian Fry to help artists and intellectuals who wished to escape Europe.

[3] Christian Zervos, Notes sur Kandinsky. A propos de sa récente exposition à la Galerie eds Chaiers d’Art, Cahier d’Art, n° 5-8, 1934, p. 154

[4] Vassily Kandinsky, Regard sur le pasée, 1913