Collection Publications: Klinger to Kollwitz Labels4

Kandinsky left Germany during World War I.Upon his return, in December 1921, he was appointed to the faculty of the Bauhaus in Weimar. Soon after, he began work on his Small Worlds print portfolio, which was printed at the Bauhaus and published in 1922 by the Propylaen Verlag in Berlin. This portfolio is com­ posed of twelve prints: four drypoints, two black-and­ white wood-cuts, two color woodcuts transferred to lithographic stones, and four color lithographs. Kandinsky's choice of graphic techniques is explained in his Bauhaus book Punkt und Linie (Point and Line to Plane). In regard to lithography, he wrote: "its particular speed in creation, combined with an almost indestructible hardness of the block, completely suits the spirit of our time." Small Worlds marks a transitional phase in Kandinsky's oeuvre. The planetary composition of plate IV is related to his early work from Russia, but is not as strictly geometric as the work of his later years at the Bauhaus.