Due to a Nazi smear campaign the Bauhaus left Dessau in 1932 for Berlin and Kandinsky decided to leave Germany for Paris, where he settled for the last eleven years of his life. Living in an apartment, he created his paintings in a living-room studio. His work at this time often features biomorphic forms with supple, non-geometric outlines, suggesting microscopic organisms, which tended to express the artist’s inner life in various ways. Kandinsky also liked to imbue these forms with original colour compositions, evoking Slavic popular art motifs. He also occasionally mixed sand with paint to give a granular, rustic texture to his paintings.
Housed in the Musée National d’Art Moderne Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the 1940 canvas Sky Blue is a key example of this period. The painting draws inspiration from biology, depicting forms resembling embryos, larvae or invertebrates, a minuscule population embodying the living. This image also exemplifies the fact that in the final years of his life, Kandinsky’s work tended towards a blue monochrome palette. Whereas previously his paintings were composed of colours confronting and challenging each other, now they were liberated in a blue expanse, savouring the freedom to dream.