Delicate Tension

Wassily Kandinsky
Delicate Tension. No. 85
1923
Watercolor and ink on paper.
35.5 x 25.2 cm

Delicate Tension was executed by Kandinsky at the Bauhaus during the prestigious school’s most rationalist period under the directorship of Theo van Doesburg, from 1923 to 1925. During these years the initial Expressionistic style of this avant-garde centre evolved towards greater commitment to the Constructivist aesthetic which was spreading internationally. Kandinsky delved more deeply in his investigation of the correspondences between forms and colours, and the geometric shapes found in his works from this period, which is sometimes described as “cold ”, are basically the circle and the triangle, which he considered to be “the two primary, most strongly contrasting plane figures”.