Thirty

The canvas is divided into thirty squares across five rows and six columns. Within this alternating checkerboard of black and white, mysterious symbols reminiscent of ancient hieroglyphs and microscopic organisms are arrayed.

The year was 1937, a period when catastrophic persecution reached its height for Kandinsky. In Munich, Germany, the Nazi regime staged the "Degenerate Art" exhibition. Avant-garde art was forcibly confiscated from museums across Germany, and fifty-seven of Kandinsky's works were seized. Fourteen of them were put on public display and ridiculed as the pinnacle of "degenerate art."

Relentless defamation by the Nazis and the loss of his homeland. This was the second time in the latter half of his life that he had lost all his possessions and past works. At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, he had hurried back to Russia, entrusting his Munich studio and all his works to his former partner, Gabriele Münter. However, following their eventual separation, he was never able to recover the early works he had left in her care.

Amid such fierce adversity, Kandinsky lived a secluded life with his wife, Nina, in Neuilly on the outskirts of Paris. Though stripped of everything and faced with circumstances that demanded his silence, he refused to be silenced. Maintaining an astonishing creative drive, he exhibited work after work in Bern, Switzerland, and at museums in Paris, proving to the world that he was still thriving as a champion of the international avant-garde.