Ineinander 1928

Wassily Kandinsky made this watercolor painting, Ineinander, in Germany, sometime in the first half of the twentieth century. The title, which means "interpenetration" or "into one another", evokes the spiritualist leanings that lay behind the work. Kandinsky was a prominent figure at the Bauhaus, the famous German school of art and design that sought to dissolve the traditional boundaries between artistic disciplines and bring art into closer contact with everyday life. But with the rise of Nazism, the Bauhaus was forced to close in 1933, and its faculty, including Kandinsky, were scattered. Here, the planes and lines and circles, rendered in bright but translucent washes of color, suggest a harmonic convergence. Though abstract, they reflect a progressive utopianism, common among artists associated with the Bauhaus, which sought to create a new universal visual language free from national and cultural associations. To understand this painting better, research into the Bauhaus and other institutions in which Kandinsky worked is essential. We must always be mindful of the social conditions that shape artistic production.