Guggenheim Museum - Global Exhibitions - Bilbao

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Kandinsky in Context
July 5, 2002–January 19, 2003

Vasily Kandinsky can be considered the Guggenheim's signature artist. Collected in depth by Solomon R. Guggenheim, with the avid support of the museum's first director Hilla Rebay, works by Kandinsky comprise a substantial part of the New York institution's permanent holdings. Kandinsky in Context, organized by Associate Curator Tracey Bashkoff, demonstrates the artist's centrality in the development of the Guggenheim's collection as well as his influence on abstract art. Kandinsky's paintings—from Expressionistic landscapes of the Blaue Reiter period to geometric compositions of the years he taught at the Bauhaus—will be shown alongside works by contemporaries such as Josef Albers, Jean Arp, Paul Klee, Franz Marc, and László Moholy-Nagy, all of whom are well represented in the Guggenheim's collection. Revealing a dialogue of mutual influence, these juxtapositions also show the range and diversity of artistic and intellectual currents across Europe in the years prior to World War II.