Study for “Landscape with Tower”

b. 1866, Moscow; d. 1944, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France

Study for “Landscape with Tower”, 1908

Oil on board

In 1908 Vasily Kandinsky began visiting the market village of Murnau am Staffelsee, outside Munich, along with artists in his circle, including Alexei Jawlensky, Gabriele Münter, and Marianne Werefkin. Múnter soon purchased a house there, where she and Kandinsky spent their summers until 1914. Situated at the foot of the Bavarian Alps, between a lake and the moors, Murnau offered a dramatic landscape and became an important focus in Kandinsky's work for several years.

The paintings shown here demonstrate the significance of this period and the possibilities of place in the evolution of the artist's oeuvre.

Graphic elements-such as clearly delineated forms, flattened perspective, and the tense balance between positive and negative space characteristic of Kandinsky's woodcuts-pervade his jewel-toned Bavarian landscapes. The exuberant colors and simplified forms of locally produced Hinterglasbilder (reverse glass paintings), which Kandinsky and his peers admired, also resonate in these animated images,