Wassily Kandinsky
It is Sunday, so we continue our special month with the Lenbachhaus collection from Munich. Enjoy! :)
In 1913 and 1914, Kandinsky immersed himself in Biblical and apocalyptic imagery. He sought to frame the chaos of his own time in a new way artistically. As Kandinsky stated in Reminiscences: “Painting is a thunderous collision of different worlds that are destined in and through conflict to create that new world called the work. Technically, every work of art comes into being in the same way as the cosmos—by means of catastrophes, which ultimately create- out of the cacophony of the various instruments- that symphony we call the music of the spheres. The creation of the work of art is the creation of the world.”
His Composition VII is a characteristic example of such an apocalyptic symphony. The painting, which is now at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, represents the pinnacle of Kandinsky’s output in Munich. He spent months producing drafts and sketches, and painting several extensive oil studies such as this one. He was very well prepared when, on November 25, 1913, a canvas measuring 201 × 302 cm was delivered to his apartment on Ainmillerstraße. Gabriele Münter, the artist, who was his partner at the time, recorded his progress in her diary and made a note every time she took another photograph of the increasingly crowded canvas. Starting out from several compositional centers, Kandinsky completed the enormous Composition VII in just four days. On November 28, Münter briefly noted: “Picture finished.”
P.S. Wassily Kandinsky was one of the most important painters of the 20th century. Do you know these 5 famous abstract paintings by Kandinsky?
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