The study that we present today is a significant piece in Wassily Kandinsky’s groundbreaking Improvisations series, marking his early ventures into abstraction. Created in 1909, a pivotal year in Kandinsky's artistic evolution, this series reflects his transition toward non-material, abstract art that aimed to express spiritual rather than physical realities. In these works, Kandinsky sought to capture emotional responses and inner experiences through spontaneous and near-autonomous forms of color, rather than depicting the outer world’s visual phenomena.
During this period, Kandinsky began categorizing his major paintings into three groups: Impressions, Improvisations, and Compositions. As described in his theoretical text Concerning the Spiritual in Art, the Impressions series conveyed external nature in a painterly form, while Improvisations were mostly unconscious expressions of inner emotions. Compositions, by contrast, were carefully planned and executed over time.
Kandinsky’s Improvisations were central to his quest to reveal the internal nature or "sound" of visual experience. Throughout 1909, he created eight numbered Improvisations and continued painting others until World War I. These works aligned closely with the spiritual ideas he explored in his writings, reflecting a shift away from representation toward a more abstract, spiritual vision of reality.
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