Kandinsky at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau
When Wassily Kandinsky began teaching at the Bauhaus in Weimar in July 1922, he was put in charge of parts of the introductory curriculum. He taught Analytical Drawing, the preliminary course Abstract Form Elements, and Color Theory, and also headed up the mural painting workshop. At a later point, he also oversaw the painting department. In the mid-1920s, the Bauhaus relocated from Weimar to Dessau, and Nina and Wassily Kandinsky moved into one of the newly completed master houses, a duplex they shared with the Klees, with whom they maintained a lifelong, very close friendship and artistic connection. In Dessau, Kandinsky experienced an extremely creative phase, working on new and radical artistic approaches that still identify him as a pioneer of abstract painting to this day.

Kandinsky's Geometric Abstraction
“After the dramatic phase that lasted from 1910 to 1919, the constructive phase commenced. The pictures had a clear structure and were reminiscent of architecture, which is why we also refer to the period that began during the Weimar era as his architectural epoch. The years between 1925 and 1928 saw his so-called epoch of circles.” (Nina Kandinsky, Kandinsky at the Bauhaus, Halle/Saale 2008, p. 76)
Inspired by Russian Constructivism, Kandinsky changed his expressive pre-war style by the early 1920s. Using a significantly lighter palette, his forms became more geometric: his repertoire of shapes began to include circles, squares, triangles, arrow shapes, line clusters, checkerboard structures, and symbols. Sharper contours replaced soft edges. He himself described this new direction as “cool abstraction” and published an article on the subject in Cicerone in 1925. His new structures float freely in space, intersecting and penetrating one another or grouping themselves around an imaginary center. He created highly complex compositions boasting a multitude of shapes and colors." (Wassily Kandinsky, in: Der Cicerone, issue 17, 1925, p. 647)

Arguably influenced by essential impulses from the Dutch artists' association De Stijl, represented at the Bauhaus in Weimar by Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931), Kandinsky and his Bauhaus colleagues began to focus intensively on the square in their artwork from the early 1920s onwards. Kandinsky used geometric shapes as an integral part of his abstract compositions, particularly in his exploration of color and its correlation with the shapes assigned to it. He regarded surface and space, shape and color as inevitably linked: no element can exist without the other.

Asserting - Affirming - Confirming
“Asserting” [literature also mentions it as “Affirming” and “Confirming”] reflects the elements Kandinsky describes in his work “Point and Line to Plane,” which he had published earlier that year.
His reflections on the artistic means of abstract painting, the main elements of his formal language, their expression, and their psychological effect become clearly evident in this well-conceived and precisely drafted composition. On the one hand, the painting visualizes Kandinsky's view that the question of form is based on the correct relationship between the three primary surface forms: Within several clearly defined surfaces that are generous in size and partially overlap, Kandinsky arranged smaller and larger variants of the classic geometric shapes of circles, rectangles, squares, and triangles that transforms into stripes and checkerboard patterns. Shapes and surfaces appear at distinct angles to create a sense of space.

Both the work's composition and forms and colors reveal a particular clarity and a sense of order and balance characteristic of the Bauhaus philosophy, and which cannot be attributed to many other works. This effect is accentuated by the clear, varied contrasts that Kandinsky uses here. A strong light-dark contrast organizes the surface of the picture. At the same time, the center is inhabited by small quantities of complementary contrasts—red next to green, violet next to yellow—and quality contrasts, where pure, bright colors stand alongside muted, duller colors. On closer inspection, the entire representation ultimately appears to be a masterpiece of color theory: Kandinsky uses contrasts, shades, and saturations, allowing areas of color and shapes to overlap and creating the exact resulting mixed colors at the intersections.
Another fundamental concern of the Bauhaus artists at that time was the representation of movement. Arrows, triangles, and diagonals are used to evoke the impression of momentum and direction. In “ Behauptend ” (Assertive), Kandinsky uses the triangle like an arrow, creating a dynamic movement from the outside to the inside, guiding the viewer’s eye towards the center of the picture like a signpost.

Not only Kandinsky's own explorations of the fundamental artistic elements of color and form and their interrelationships, but also the artistic themes and principles present throughout the Bauhaus movement, merge to form a greater whole in this work.

The beginning of the legendary Solomon R. Guggenheim Collection, New York
The names Solomon R. Guggenheim and Wassily Kandinsky have always been closely linked. The two men maintained frequent exchange throughout their lives, but it was the German artist Hilla Rebay von Ehrenwiesen who originally introduced them. She was the one who advised Guggenheim on his plan to build an extensive collection of modern art and introduced the industrialist to the artist.
In 1916, Hilla Rebay von Ehrenwiesen became acquainted with Kandinsky's art through, among other things, his essay “Concerning the Spiritual in Art.” At that time, she was already intensively engaged with the European avant-garde.
It was through her influence that Guggenheim became interested in the works of contemporary artists for the first time, particularly in non-objective, non-figurative, or abstract art with no reference to the real world, such as the then completely novel works of Wassily Kandinsky or those of Rebay's former lover Rudolf Bauer, but also of Robert Delaunay and László Moholy-Nagy. “They weren’t collecting what was fashionable, what was accepted, but seeking out art that was different." (Guggenheim-Kuratorin Megan Fontanella, zit. nach: Caitlin Dover, The Makers of the Guggenheim, Feb. 2, 2017, https://www.guggenheim.org/articles/checklist/the-makers-of-the-guggenheim)
Guggenheim selbst erklärt: "Everybody was telling me that this modern stuff was the bunk. So as I’ve always been interested in things that people told me were the bunk, I decided that therefore there must be beauty in modern art. I got to feel those pictures so deeply that I wanted them to live with me." (Quoted from: https://www.guggenheim.org/about-us/history/solomon-r-guggenheim)

Hilla von Rebay and Solomon R. Guggenheim purchased the first paintings by Wassily Kandinsky in 1929. The following year, von Rebay wrote to the artist: "Dear Mr. Kandinsky, [...] I wanted to let you know that I very much hope you will be in Dessau in the next few days. We are visiting only because of you, Mr. Guggenheim, his wife, and I, who love your great art so much. He owns The White Border, The Bright Picture, Black Lines, and other masterpieces of yours [...]. Mr. G. has met my friends Léger, Gleizes, Braque, Délaunay, Chagall, and Mondrian here, but he loves Bauer's and your paintings the most. You will meet a fine, great man who is passionate and open to all things great. A year ago, he was completely unfamiliar with this art, as one rarely sees good abstract art in New York.” (Hilla von Rebay to Wassily Kandinsky, June 25, 1930, quoted from: Exhibition catalog Art of Tomorrow, Munich 2005, p. 91)
As planned, the Guggenheims and Hilla von Rebay set off on an art trip to Europe in the summer of 1930. On July 7, they visited the Kandinskys in Dessau. Kandinsky gave Guggenheim a copy of his recently published book “Point and Line to Plane,” and Guggenheim immediately purchased four of the artist's paintings. Years later, Nina Kandinsky would recall their first meeting: “Guggenheim was an imposing figure, a cultured and modest gentleman.” (Nina Kandinsky, 1976, quoted in: ibid., p. 92)

After the NSDAP seized power and the Bauhaus was closed in 1933, Nina and Wassily Kandinsky moved to France, where they settled in the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. During the summers of 1935 and 1936, Guggenheim and Rebay revisited them and acquired several more paintings, presumably also the present painting, which can be found on a list of works with the French heading "Collection de Mr. S. R. Guggenheim, New York“ and also on a handwritten list with a note in French: ”Gugg.-Foundation acheté direct. chez moi [Gugg.-Foundation purchased directly from me]" (Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris).
Further purchases were made in the 1930s and 1940s. The Guggenheims exhibited part of their impressive collection in their spacious suites at the Plaza Hotel. Other works were housed in their country house, Trilora Court, in Sands Point, Long Island. However, it soon became apparent that the manner of presentation was no longer appropriate for the quality of the works on display. Rebay soon organized the first traveling museum exhibition of the works that form the foundation of the Guggenheim Collection: beginning in 1936, they were on display at the Gibbes Memorial Art Gallery (now the Gibbes Museum of Art) in Charleston, South Carolina, the Philadelphia Art Alliance, and, in 1939, the Baltimore Museum of Art. “Assertive” was also included in this critical “tour,” which was accompanied by five comprehensive catalogs, now known in the history of the collection as “The First Five Books.”
In 1939, the Guggenheim Foundation, now led by Rebay as curator and director, finally found a permanent home: the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, which became the precursor to today's Guggenheim Museum. Since 1952, it has functioned as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and since 1959, it has been housed in the world-famous building on the Upper East Side designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

In addition to numerous large-format paintings, some of which are still in the Guggenheim Foundation today, “Behauptend” (Assertive) from the 1930s is a key piece in this legendary collection and in the history of one of the world's leading museums. [CH]