Perhaps more than any other 20th-century painter, Vasily Kandinsky has been linked to the history of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The current collection on display includes over 150 of his works, which are regularly presented in a dedicated gallery at the museum.
The current selection, ‘Kandinsky in Paris’, 1934–1944, examines the last 11 years of his life. After the Nazi government closed the Berlin Bauhaus (where he had been a teacher) in 1933, Kandinsky settled in the Parisian suburb Neuilly-sur-Seine. In France, his formal vocabulary changed, and diagrams of amoebas, embryos, and other primitive cellular and plant forms provided the sources for the whimsical biomorphic imagery that would be predominant in his late paintings. Instead of his characteristic primary colors, Kandinsky favored softer, pastel hues—pink, violet, turquoise, and gold—reminiscent of the colors of his Russian origins.
He also increasingly experimented with materials, such as combining sand with pigment. While Kandinsky found that his art had affinities with Surrealism and other abstract movements in Paris, he never fully immersed himself in the city’s artistic environment. Drawn from the museum’s permanent collection, this intimate presentation features paintings from a prolific period of Kandinsky’s career. The exhibition is organized by Tracey Bashkoff, Senior Curator, Collections and Exhibitions, and Megan Fontanella, Associate Curator, Collections and Provenance.
Meanwhile, ‘New Harmony: Abstraction between the Wars, 1919–1939’ explores a particularly rich facet of the Guggenheim’s 20th-century collection, celebrating the spirited trends in abstraction embraced among international artists working in Europe between the World Wars. The exhibition—titled for a 1936 Paul Klee painting of utopian geometry that reflects the artist’s interest in color theory and musical composition—features 40 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by some 20 artists, including Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti, Fernand Léger, Francis Picabia, and Joaquín Torres-García.
The metamorphosis from private collection to public museum is an extraordinary transition. For the Guggenheim, this occurred in 1937, when Solomon R. Guggenheim established a foundation empowered to operate a museum that would publicly exhibit and preserve his holdings of nonobjective art. Today the Guggenheim is a museum in multiple locations with access to shared collections, common constituencies, and joint programming.
The current selection, ‘Kandinsky in Paris’, 1934–1944, examines the last 11 years of his life. After the Nazi government closed the Berlin Bauhaus (where he had been a teacher) in 1933, Kandinsky settled in the Parisian suburb Neuilly-sur-Seine. In France, his formal vocabulary changed, and diagrams of amoebas, embryos, and other primitive cellular and plant forms provided the sources for the whimsical biomorphic imagery that would be predominant in his late paintings. Instead of his characteristic primary colors, Kandinsky favored softer, pastel hues—pink, violet, turquoise, and gold—reminiscent of the colors of his Russian origins.
He also increasingly experimented with materials, such as combining sand with pigment. While Kandinsky found that his art had affinities with Surrealism and other abstract movements in Paris, he never fully immersed himself in the city’s artistic environment. Drawn from the museum’s permanent collection, this intimate presentation features paintings from a prolific period of Kandinsky’s career. The exhibition is organized by Tracey Bashkoff, Senior Curator, Collections and Exhibitions, and Megan Fontanella, Associate Curator, Collections and Provenance.
Meanwhile, ‘New Harmony: Abstraction between the Wars, 1919–1939’ explores a particularly rich facet of the Guggenheim’s 20th-century collection, celebrating the spirited trends in abstraction embraced among international artists working in Europe between the World Wars. The exhibition—titled for a 1936 Paul Klee painting of utopian geometry that reflects the artist’s interest in color theory and musical composition—features 40 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by some 20 artists, including Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti, Fernand Léger, Francis Picabia, and Joaquín Torres-García.
The metamorphosis from private collection to public museum is an extraordinary transition. For the Guggenheim, this occurred in 1937, when Solomon R. Guggenheim established a foundation empowered to operate a museum that would publicly exhibit and preserve his holdings of nonobjective art. Today the Guggenheim is a museum in multiple locations with access to shared collections, common constituencies, and joint programming.
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