by Tom Gurney
Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Published on June 19, 2020 / Updated on October 14, 2023
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
Heavy Circles by Wassily Kandinsky: Introduction
Two large disks overlap near the centre of an almost black field. One glows yellow; the other holds dark reds and browns. Smaller circles gather at the sides and below. Their edges are precise, but their interiors vary: some look flat and clear, while others appear clouded or translucent. The Norton Simon Museum identifies this painting as Wassily Kandinsky's Heavy Circles, made in 1927. It is an oil on canvas, 57.2 × 52.1 cm, accession P.1953.216. The museum counts fifteen circles, each picked out by a narrow halo of bright paint. [1].
The image may suggest a planetary system, but it does not chart named planets. Norton Simon also proposes the very different possibility of microscopic organisms. Both associations arise from how the circles float, overlap and partly hide each other in the dark space. This is more useful than a literal astronomical label. Kandinsky's arrangement gives the viewer a sense of scale and movement without the regular paths or measured distances of a diagram. [1].
Annotated details in Heavy Circles
Select a numbered point to examine three close views of the work.
123Select a number to reach its detail.
Details from HEAVY CIRCLES
Three close views of the work.
Amber circle
An amber disc overlaps the dark central field.
Yellow circle
A luminous yellow circle presses against the darker surrounding shapes.
Lower cluster
Small coloured discs gather below the two dominant circles.
Photograph by Daderot, CC0 1.0 on Wikimedia Commons; the photograph includes its frame. View image source and terms.
Watch: Wassily Kandinsky
Five museum videos about Kandinsky’s art, sources of inspiration and the relationship between colour and music.
Vasily Kandinsky: Around the Circle
Curator Megan Fontanella introduces Kandinsky and the Guggenheim collection.
Watch on YouTubeAt a Glance
- Artist and date:Wassily Kandinsky, 1927.
- Medium and dimensions:Oil on canvas, 57.2 × 52.1 cm (22½ × 20½ inches).
- Collection:Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, The Blue Four Galka Scheyer Collection, accession P.1953.216.
- Form:Fifteen overlapping and separate circles against a dark ground, with narrow bright edges.
- Interpretation:Cosmic and microscopic comparisons are possible readings, not documented identifications of specific objects.
- Related works:Circles in a Circle (1923, Philadelphia) and Several Circles (1926, Guggenheim) are distinct paintings.
- Image:Existing front-on site reproduction retained. A 2026 visitor photograph explicitly released CC0 by its photographer is saved separately as an optional guide image.
Where this work sits in Kandinsky’s career
The Blue Rider
1903Composition VII
1913Composition VIII
1923Several Circles
1926Sky Blue
1940Contents
- Annotated details
- Where the circles hold weight
- A cosmic reading, with limits
- Circles across the Bauhaus years
- Galka Scheyer and the Blue Four
- Frequently asked questions
- References
Where the circles hold weight
The large yellow circle is the first centre of attention. It lies partly behind a darker, reddish disk at the left. Their intersection becomes a deep region that feels different from either colour alone. A smaller dark circle touches the lower edge of the yellow one. At the upper right, a red circle hangs apart, while a group of yellow, blue and subdued green forms sits farther right. Another bright, textured yellow circle anchors the lower left. The smaller red, blue and green points around it create a different rhythm from the slower collision of the two central forms. [1].
These circles are not all identical units repeated at different sizes. Some have mottled colour; some are muted enough to merge with the black ground. An overlap may cover one disk and reveal another. The museum's audio description draws attention to the large yellow circle as a possible sun and to several intersections as eclipse-like. That visual reading is convincing as an analogy: yellow light seems to be interrupted by shapes passing in front. Yet the audio itself uses possibility, and the canvas supplies no names, orbits or astronomical event. [1].
The title Heavy Circles can be tested against the picture. The two central forms appear substantial, especially where their colour collects into dark, thick-looking areas. Around them, smaller disks seem to hover more lightly. The dark background gives them no horizon or floor, so weight is a visual impression produced by relative size, colour and overlap rather than by gravity in a depicted room. A circle can seem to advance when its edge is bright and to recede when it loses contrast. The painting continually reverses those apparent positions. [1].
Norton Simon notes that each circle has a slender halo of bright paint. At the scale of the existing page image, these rims are harder to see than the large colour fields; a visitor looking at the original could test how much they separate the circles from the ground. The museum's description makes this detail specific to the object, rather than a general claim that every Kandinsky circle glows in the same way. The halos help a number of muted disks remain visible without turning the black field into an outlined grid. [1].
A cosmic reading, with limits
The museum cites Kandinsky's 1930 letter to art historian Will Grohmann as context for his circle paintings. Kandinsky wrote of the circle as having a connection with the cosmic while emphasising that he used it above all as a formal element. He also valued the way one simple shape could join opposing qualities, including movement toward and away from a centre. The letter comes three years after Heavy Circles. It illuminates an ongoing interest; it is not a contemporaneous explanation of each disk in this painting. [1].
The old page used the letter as broad confirmation that the work represents planets. That is stronger than its wording permits. The same painting can invite the eye to see a far-off constellation or a near-at-hand cluster of organisms, as the museum's audio tour suggests. The ambiguity is produced by the art itself. There is no familiar landform or figure to settle scale, and the different treatments of the circles make some look gaseous, others solid. The effect is a field of relations rather than a map of a single known place. [1].
“Cosmic” also need not mean Kandinsky was illustrating a particular scientific discovery. His letter connects circle and cosmic feeling but immediately returns to the shape's formal possibilities. In the painting, colour, size, spacing and partial concealment are concrete ways to investigate those possibilities. The red disk floating alone near the top changes the sense of space created by the larger pair, while a small group at lower left gives the dark ground a second centre. One does not need to assign planets to find order and tension there. [1].
Circles across the Bauhaus years
Heavy Circles belongs to Kandinsky's Bauhaus period, when geometric forms became increasingly prominent in his work. The circle had already been explored in Circles in a Circle of 1923, now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and in the much larger Several Circles of 1926, now at the Guggenheim. Those are separate collection objects, with different compositions and scales. Philadelphia describes its canvas through geometry and subtle colour harmony. The Guggenheim dates Several Circles to January–February 1926 and describes layered, sometimes transparent disks against a dark ground. [5]; [4].
Comparing the works shows why a repeated motif does not make them interchangeable. In Circles in a Circle, a surrounding larger ring and crossing bands organise the field. In Several Circles, disks spread across a large square surface. Heavy Circles condenses its drama into the pair of large overlapping forms and a few separated groups on a canvas less than 60 cm high. The shared interest is in what circles can do when they change in size, transparency and colour, not in identifying a numbered “circle series” from the title alone. [5]; [4]; [1].
The precision of the outlines does not eliminate variation within them. The yellow of the large centre is uneven; the lower yellow disk has a granular appearance; some smaller circles allow the dark ground to affect their tone. Norton Simon's audio account notes that the yellow seems thin over black in places but more built up at intersections. This produces a shifting sense of depth without using conventional perspective. It is the interaction of material colour and geometry that gives the seemingly simple composition much of its force. [1].
Galka Scheyer and the Blue Four
The painting's history is also unusually personal. Norton Simon identifies it as part of its Blue Four Galka Scheyer Collection and states that Kandinsky gave Heavy Circles to Scheyer as a gesture of friendship. Scheyer promoted the four artists Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Alexei Jawlensky and Lyonel Feininger in the United States. The museum's collection history explains that her collection and archive passed to the Pasadena Art Institute through her estate in 1953, forming the basis of important modern holdings now at Norton Simon. These documented facts are a better account of how the painting reached Pasadena than the old page's generic description of a costly museum collection. [2]; [3].
The Norton Simon object page currently marks Heavy Circles on view. Display status can change, so that label should be checked before travelling. Its accession and collection identity are more stable. The owner has a process for requesting its image, but the current site reproduction is already usable. A distinct 2026 visitor photograph by Daderot on Wikimedia Commons is explicitly CC0 from its photographer and has been saved as an optional guide image. It shows the framed work in the gallery, with some glare and perspective; the site's front-on image remains the clearer illustration of the composition. [1]; [6].
Heavy Circles holds the eye between two scales of looking. The central pair appears monumental against the dark ground, while the scattered small disks make the same surface feel spacious. The museum's cosmic comparison captures one possible effect, and its microscopic comparison captures another. Neither needs to cancel the simple visual facts: fifteen coloured circles, carefully separated and overlapped, set a nearly black field into motion. [1].
Kandinsky artworks directory
Frequently Asked Questions
Norton Simon dates the painting to 1927, during Kandinsky's Bauhaus years. His often-cited letter to Will Grohmann about circles was written later, in 1930. [1].
It is oil on canvas, 57.2 × 52.1 cm (22½ × 20½ inches), according to the owning museum. [1].
Norton Simon counts fifteen, including the two dominant overlapping circles and the smaller forms around them. [1].
The circles can suggest planets or an eclipse, but Norton Simon presents these as visual associations. Its audio tour also compares microscopic organisms. No specific astronomical system is documented as the subject. [1].
No. Heavy Circles is a 1927 oil at Norton Simon in Pasadena. Several Circles is a distinct 1926 oil at the Guggenheim in New York, much larger in scale. [1]; [4].
Discussion
What do you notice first in Heavy Circles? Share a close observation or a question about the evidence for this work.
Comments are for comparing what we see and what the cited sources establish.
Reader Insights
Which small circle most changes the balance of the large central pair?
What changes when you compare this 1927 canvas with the larger Several Circles?
Which visible detail supports a cosmic reading, and what remains an analogy?
Join the Conversation
Add your observation below and tell us which part of the artwork led you to it.
References
- Norton Simon Museum, Heavy Circles, P.1953.216, object essay and audio transcript. View source.
- Norton Simon Museum, Maven of Modernism: Galka Scheyer in California. View source.
- Norton Simon Museum, Blue Four Galka Scheyer Collection history. View source.
- Guggenheim Museum, 2021 Kandinsky exhibition checklist, Several Circles entry. View source.
- Philadelphia Museum of Art, Circles in a Circle, 1923. View source.
- Wikimedia Commons, Daderot CC0 photograph of Heavy Circles, cited only for the optional image decision. View source.
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