How to Read a Painting: Kandinsky

Wassily Kandinsky painted Rigide et courbé (Rigid and Curved) in December 1935, marking the second anniversary of his arrival in Paris after the closure at the Berlin Bauhaus. The canvas is densely packed with lively geometric vignettes and a thoughtfully textured surface composed of sand mixed with paint, a technique Kandinsky used only in his Paris paintings of 1934–1935.
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The painting was first owned by Solomon R. Guggenheim, who acquired it from Kandinsky in 1936. Extensively published and highly exhibited between 1937 and 1949, the work is undoubtedly the most important Paris period painting by Kandinsky to ever appear on the market.
‘With its dynamic sweep of upward energy, Rigide et courbé evokes an epic paean, a rhapsodic song of thanksgiving suggesting the bright hope the artist saw in his new home in Paris following his flight from Nazi Germany,’ explains Conor Jordan, Deputy Chairman of Impressionist & Modern Art.
After spending the summer of 1933 in Paris and on holiday by the Mediterranean, the artist and his wife Nina decided to re-locate from Berlin to the French capital. Marcel Duchamp found them a three-room, sixth floor flat in a new building at 135, boulevard de la Seine (today the boulevard Général Koenig), overlooking the river, in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. The Kandinskys took up residence in their new home during the final days of December 1933.
Bound shapes on one side and the opposition of thrusting supple organic forms that press outward against the other suggest a veiled narrative of escape, release and the freedom to begin anew, just as Kandinsky had recently experienced in the drastic, but hopeful change of circumstances in his own life. Rigide et courbé reflects the profound impact Kandinsky’s new French surroundings had on his painting.
Estimated at $18–25 million, the painting is being offered from an important private American collection and has not been on the market since 1964. The upcoming sale preview (Christie’s Hong Kong, 30 September to 1 October; Christie’s London, 6-9 October; San Francisco, 13-16 October) marks the first time in over 50 years that the work will be publicly displayed.