Tate Modern Level 4 East
22 June – 1 October 2006
Twenty-five works by the Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), one of the 20th Century’s greatest pioneers of abstraction, have arrived at Tate Modern from Russia to take their place as part of the first exhibition in the UK devoted to this artist’s painting. The 21 oils and four works on paper have never been seen in this country and have come from key international collections at The State Russian Museum (St Petersburg), The State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow), The State Hermitage (St Petersburg) and The State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, (Moscow) as well as from a number of smaller regional collections in Russia. The works form a significant part of the exhibition, Kandinsky: The Path to Abstraction which will comprise 74 pieces. More than 90% of the works have never been displayed in the UK.
Among the most significant paintings to arrive at the gallery will be two magnificent oils on canvas, Composition VI 1913 from The Hermitage and Composition VII 1913 from The Tretyakov. These two outstanding works, filled with movement and colour, are at the heart of the exhibition and demonstrate Kandinsky’s fully developed abstract style following an intense period of experimentation. Composition VII is the largest work ever painted by Kandinsky and has dimensions of two x three metres. The work took him three and a half days to paint. In all Kandinsky made ten Compositions and these are two of the most important from this group.
Sean Rainbird, the curator of the exhibition said,
To be able to show these stunning works for the first time in the UK is a great privilege and we are grateful to the great State and regional collections in Russia for lending them to us. They join many other important works from around the globe. A gathering of so many oil paintings by Kandinsky from this seminal period in his artistic development is unprecedented in this country.
The Russian loans will be hung alongside major works from many other institutions and private collections such as the The Solomon Guggenheim Gallery in New York, The Centre Pompidou in Paris and The Lenbachhaus in Munich.
Kandinsky: The Path to Abstraction will be the largest exhibition in the UK of works by the artist and the first to focus on his paintings. The show will examine the period in Kandinsky’s career when he was arguably at his height, spanning his time in Munich and Murnau, his return to Moscow in 1914 and his departure from there in 1922 for Weimar via Berlin, where he accepted a teaching post at the Bauhaus.
Kandinsky: The Path to Abstraction 22 June – 1 October 2006 has been co-selected by Tate Curator Sean Rainbird, for Tate Modern and Hartwig Fischer, Curator, for Kunstmuseum Basel. It will be accompanied by a full colour, illustrated catalogue with contributions from Shulamith Behr, Bruno Haas, Noemi Smolik and Reinhard Zimmermann. It will go on display at Kunstmuseum, Basel from 21 October 2006 to 4 February 2007.