In the first of two volumes Kandinsky's temperas, gouaches and watercolours from the Munich years and the Russian period are definitively catalogued and discussed in chronological order (including those known only from documentary evidence). Many previously unknown pictures are published for the first time. The artist's earlier works, his bold abstractations from 1911 to 1914, and his little-known watercolours painted in Russia from 1915 to 1921 are fully documented and illustrated. Vivian Barnett also provides complete provenance, exhibition history and reference for more than 500 watercolours and gouaches, plus an addendum to the Catalogue of Oil Paintings (1982, 1984). The original essays, complete list of exhibitions, selective biography and extensive colour illustrations make this volume essential for collectors and scholars.

Volume One

Essay by Magdalena Dabrowski. Foreword by Richard E. Oldenburg.

This book studies Vasily Kandinsky's (1866-1944) pre-1908 figurative art that formed the basis for his later abstractions. It analyzes many published and unpublished facts of the artist's life and work and brings together numerous historical comparative data from painting, literature, the social sciences, ethnography, folklore, esthetics, and philosophy. This study penetrates deeply into Kandinsky's inner world and breaks new ground by interpreting the artist's enigmatic early imagery as his personal many-layered symbolism that expresses his complex personality, his internal responses to Russian and Western European life and culture, and his quest for spiritual truths.

Pioneering work by the great modernist painter, considered by many to be the father of abstract art and a leader in the movement to free art from traditional bonds. 12 illustrations.

Published to accompany exhibition held at Tate Modern, London, 22 June - 1 October 2006, Kunstmuseum, Basel, 21 October - 4 February 2007.

Paul Klee experienced his 1914 trip to Tunisia as a major breakthrough for his art: ÒColor and I are one,Ó he famously wrote. ÒI am a painter.Ó Kandinsky and Klee in Tunisia sets the scene for KleeÕs breakthrough with a close study of the parallel voyage undertaken in 1904Ð5 by Wassily Kandinsky and Gabriele MŸnter, who would later become Klee's friends. This artist couple, then at an early stage in their celebrated careers, produced a rich body of painting and photography known only to specialists. Paul KleeÕs 1914 trip with August Macke and Louis Moilliet, in contrast, is a vaunted convergence of cubism and the exotic. Roger Benjamin refigures these two seminal voyages in terms of colonial culture and politics, the fabric of ancient Tunisian cities, visual ethnography, and the tourist photograph. The book looks closely at the cities of Tunis, Sousse, Hammamet, and Kairouan to flesh out a profound confrontation between European high modernism and the wealth of Islamic lifeways and architecture. Kandinsky and Klee in Tunisia offers a new understanding of how the European avant-garde was formed in dialogue with cultural difference.