Hear a description of this artwork.
Narrator: "Gloomy Situation" is a work on paper about one and a half feet tall by two feet wide in shades of brown watercolor and gouache. Five overlapping rectangles of varying lengths and widths build diffused tones across the surface.
Following Paul Klee and others at the Bauhaus, a progressive German school at which he taught for a decade, Kandinsky adopted a technique to spray medium over stencils. The stencil is evidenced by the rectangles’ perfect shape; deeper-brown medium concentrates at the hard edges of the stencil and fades out gradually across the work’s surface. With these overlapping layers of sprayed rectangular shapes in varying degrees of transparency, the background feels misty and atmospheric.
Painted over the rectangles are solid, dark gouache forms. On the left, nearly filling the work from top to bottom, is a vertical, oblong shape with a horizontal almond-shaped head balancing on top. Two curved crescents jut out from the vertical form like arms reaching toward the work’s center.
This form faces a figure on the lower right, which could be seen as a caricatured silhouette of a head with a pronounced nose, lips, and giant protruding chin, which forms an egg-like shape. It could also be read as a human embryo with little appendages sticking out from its amoebic body. Hovering above and touching the top of the embryonic form is a long, curved, deep-brown crescent.
Other geometric forms appear across the work. In the upper-right corner, four small black triangles balance on their tips upon a larger black triangle. A small, black square hovers to the left of the brown crescent. Amongst all the brown and black forms, notable color accents appear on the figure on the left. Above the armlike crescents sits a brilliant band of deep electric blue, perhaps a reference to the figures in Egyptian wall painting often depicted with ornately woven colors along the neckline. The figure’s base is painted deep red, and it balances on a dark-blue rectangle.
One of the few brown-colored paintings in Kandinsky’s body of work, Gloomy Situation is one of his darkest. It was made in July of 1933, the same month the Bauhaus closed due to political pressure. The work’s title and somber brown hues might allude to the paramilitary force of the Nazi party in Germany, also known as Brownshirts due to the color of their uniforms.
At center, the overlapping sprayed stencils form lighter vertical columns. The central column is the lightest part of the work, as less brown is applied to the light paper background. Is the column an opening, a light? Is it a barrier between the two figures?
Around the late 1920s, Kandinsky’s artwork titles evolve, perhaps reflecting the Swiss artist Paul Klee’s poetic manner of titling. Generally straightforward titles such as Blue Circle, Several Circles, Circles on Black, and In the Black Square give way to a body of increasingly evocative and emotive titles, including Gloomy Situation, Calm, Twilight, Little Accents, Graceful Ascent, Decisive Rose, Pink Sweet, and Capricious Forms.
Vasily Kandinsky, "Gloomy Situation" (Trübe Lage), 1933. Watercolor and India ink on paper, 47.3 x 66.8 cm. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. 71.1936.R145 © 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris
