Kandinsky [antikvár]

Circles on Black (1921) and Blue Circle (1922), the first canvases painted when the artist arrived in Germany, inaugurate the long suite of works dominated, until 1929, by the circle. Spot or disc, dense or diaphanous, haloed with a diffuse fringe or a corona of ring-like circumferences, it is sometimes a simple cut-out in the pláne in which it is inscribed, sometimes a pure effigy of colour. Often it multiplies into separate clusters, into gravitating systems. Sometimes it seems about to dissolve into the texture which bears it, or else it stands out against it-a harsh, unendurable presence. Or a single circle can suffice to animate a surface, to invade it with concentric waves issuing from its invisible pulsation. A source of propagation or the crux of a harmony of composed dissonances, it expands to become the canvas itself, the frame of all the actions taking place within it. Thus Kandinsky created a repertory, a kind of thematic index of first principles. At Weimar and then at Dessau, when he was a professor at the Bauhaus, he was prompted by his own teaching and the thoughts it inspired in him