The literature on Wassily Kandinsky frequently notes the similarities between Blue Crest and the artist’s earlier works, which still retained a large degree of impressions from life. A church with cupolas, houses with pointed rooftops, clouds, rain, a boat with oars and the symbolical representation of a galloping horseman can thus be discerned in the composition of the canvas.
The dynamic development of the main colour motifs and their brightly expressed culmination make Blue Crest one of the artist’s most complex and expressive compositions. The intensive upward climb of the spiral-shaped movement along the diagonal is topped by a blue ridge or crest — the crest of a wave crashing into a bright space permeated with light.

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).