Kandinsky : L'énigme Du Premier Tableau Abstrait

Painted in Munich in 1911, the Picture with Circle is the first abstract painting by Kandinsky (1866-1944). For decades, this work was an enigma both for the history of art and for the artist himself, for whom the production of this painting posed complex problems.

Left "in custody" in Moscow in December 1921 when Kandinsky left for Berlin, the work subsequently disappeared into history due to the cultural censorship exercised by the Soviet regime. Even Kandinsky was unable to obtain a photograph. At the end of the 1970s, long after the artist's death, it was rediscovered in the USSR and not shown in public until 1989.

The result of exhaustive research based on previously unpublished documents, this book is the first study devoted to this seminal work in the history of modern art. In addition to offering an innovative interpretation, this book reveals the multiple levels of censorship suffered by the first abstraction at the time of its creation, providing an insight into the cultural context of the time and restoring the work to its rightful place within the essence of Kandinsky's aesthetic and the history of art.