Rigide et Courbé (Rigid and Curved) is representative of the style the painter used between 1934 and ’35, using the less angular and more organic forms that defined his later biomorphic compositions. Kandinsky completed this canvas in 1935 and collector Solomon Guggenheim acquired it from the artist in 1936. Now it comes from an unnamed American collection to Christie’s for their November sale where it is estimated at $18-25m.
Conor Jordan, deputy chairman of Impressionist and Modern Art at Christie’s describes the painting as a “rhapsodic song of thanksgiving suggesting the bright hope the artist saw in his new home in Paris following his flight from Nazi Germany.”
Christie’s currently holds the record for works by Kandinsky at $23m (then £14.4m) for Studie für Improvisation 8 which sold at a November sale in 2012. That was one of his earlier canvases, completed in 1908.
Now Christie’s looks to rival its own past record with one of the artist’s later canvases which he completed during his 11-year stay in Paris after the closure of the Berlin Bauhaus.
