The painting is one of the series of Improvisations that Kandinsky produced between 1909 and 1914. The title alone reveals associations with a work of music, to which the artist assigned an extraordinarily important place in his oeuvre. Like the majority of Kandinsky’s abstract works, Improvisation remains in touch with the visible world. It is still possible to discern in the painting the outlines of a sailing boat cleaving the waves and a dog sitting on the shore. One can, however, already sense that freedom of creativity capable of interspersing line and colour, taken in absolute purity, with fragments of reality.

Kandinsky Vasili

Kandinsky, Wassily (Vasily Vasilyevich)
1866, Moscow - 1944, Neuillysur-Seine (France)
Painter, graphic artist, book illustrator, writer on painting and poetry. Studied law and political economy at the Moscow University (1885-93). Studied art at Anton Aube's private studio (1896-97) and the Akademie Franz von Stuck in Munich (1900). One of the founders of the Phalanx group (1901), organised the Neue Kimst-lervereinigung in Munich (1909). Contributed to the exhibitions of the Jack of Diamonds (1910, 1912), Der blaue Reiter (1911-12) and Galerie Der Strum (1913). Worked for Department of An, People's Commissariat of Education (1918), headed the Museum of Painterly Culture in Moscow (1919-20). Emigrated to Germany (1921) and France (1933).