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Why is Wassily Kandinsky’s Development in Brown linked to Nazi storm troopers?

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Wassily Kandinsky: Painting with Green Center — Wassily Kandinsky *Painting with Green Center*, oil on canvas by Wassily Kandinsky, 1913; in the Art Institute of Chicago.

Wassily Kandinsky’s painting Development in Brown is considered his final work created in Germany before he immigrated to Paris in 1933. The title of the piece is widely interpreted as a sober allusion to the Nazi brown-shirted storm troopers.12

This reference reflects the hostile political climate Kandinsky faced under the Nazi Party, which systematically suppressed modern art that did not align with their ideological standards. The Nazis labeled Kandinsky’s abstract art as "degenerate art," a term used to disparage works they deemed decadent or un-German. Following the forced closure of the Bauhaus—where Kandinsky had been teaching—the artist left Germany to escape the regime's persecution of his work and the broader cultural censorship imposed by the state.312