Kandinsky's Painting with White Border

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, USA) hosts an exhibition that traces Kandinsky's working method through a roughly chronological display of twelve drawings and watercolors and one major oil sketch related to Painting with White Border.

A team of conservators from the Guggenheim and the Phillips, undertook new technical research on the painting and its related oil study, offering further insight into Kandinsky's creative process. The conservators examined Painting with White Border (owned by the Guggenheim) and its study Sketch I for Painting with White Border (Moscow) (owned by the Phillips) side-by-side for the first time.

The conservation study supports interpretations of Kandinsky's working method. For example, the direct application of the brush to canvas of Sketch I implies a more spontaneous technique as compared to the more methodical treatment of the final work, Painting with White Border, in which Kandinsky used a graphite pencil to lay out compositional elements before painting.The conservation team also discovered a previously unknown painting beneath the surface of Sketch I for Painting with White Border (Moscow). The underpainting, a representational landscape with figures, has been attributed to the German artist Gabriele Münter, Kandinsky's companion from 1903 to 1916.

Date: until January 15.
Location: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. 1071, 5th Avenue (at 89th Street). New York, USA.
Opening hours: from Sunday to Wednesday from 10am to 5.45pm. Saturdays from 10am to 7.45pm.