About this work
Painted between May and August 1940 in oil and enamel on canvas, *Around the Circle* (originally titled *Autour du cercle*) measures 96.8 × 146 cm and now resides in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. The canvas is dense with incident, yet strangely buoyant: a dominant red circle crests the composition at the top centre, presiding over undulating lines below, while an upside-down stylised humanoid form anchors the lower right. Scattered across the picture plane are primitive geometric figures, energetic lines, and a cheerful palette of pastel colors, alongside a series of steps that lead nowhere. The effect is part cosmos, part microscope slide — a world teeming with life that refuses to be pinned down. Kandinsky places a portal or open door within the composition, with a staircase leading up to it, inviting the eye into a space where logic dissolves and sensation takes over.
Forced to leave Germany in 1933 due to political pressures, Kandinsky's move to Paris ushered in a highly creative period in which — freed from teaching and administrative responsibilities — he devoted himself entirely to his art.
His late works are marked by a general lightening of his palette, with the addition of pastel and acidic colors and the introduction of organic imagery, as he broke away from the rigidity of Bauhaus geometry toward softer, more malleable shapes that often display a whimsical, playful quality.
He drew prolifically from images in biology, creating forms that resembled embryos, larvae, and invertebrates — a world of minuscule living organisms — with his use of biomorphic forms attesting to a deep fascination with embryology, zoology, and botany.
These images have been interpreted as signs of an optimistic vision of a peaceful future and the hope of rebirth and social regeneration — and Kandinsky himself considered this painting to be one of his most important works.
Wide and horizontally expansive at nearly five feet across, *Around the Circle* rewards scale. It belongs in a room that has breathing space around it — a living room with high ceilings, a wide hallway, or a light-filled studio where the pastels shift through the day. The circle carried symbolic, cosmic meaning for Kandinsky, representing to him both the past and the present, which gives the work a rare quality of simultaneously feeling ancient and utterly contemporary. It speaks directly to viewers drawn to art that operates on feeling rather than recognition — those who want a painting that rewards long looking and never quite resolves itself into anything comfortable or final.
