Imagine Vasily Kandinsky in 1908, settled in the small Bavarian village of Murnau. Before him, mountains, a brewery tower, churches. Classic subjects for a painter. Yet, in just six years, these landscapes will become the laboratory of a revolution: the transition from figuration to lyrical abstraction, that painting where forms and colors exist for themselves, no longer representing anything from the visible world.
Kandinsky's figurative landscapes: Murnau as a laboratory (1908-1910)
It all begins with a love affair with a place. Kandinsky and his companion Gabriele Münter buy a house in Murnau, the famous Russenhaus. There, surrounded by artists like Jawlensky and Werefkin, they paint frantically the Bavarian Alps. Take Murnau, landscape with brewery tower (1908): you can clearly recognize the Pantl brewery tower. But look at the colors! They explode. The real is still there, but already transformed.
Kandinsky then discovers the glass paintings of local artisans. These modest popular decorations reveal something essential to him: color can shine, vibrate, exist independently of what it is supposed to represent. Between 1909 and 1913, he created 33 fixed under glass (Source: Centre Pompidou), appropriating this traditional technique to explore new chromatic territories.
At the same time, in 1909, he founded the Neue Künstlervereinigung München, an association of artists seeking freedom of expression. The context is effervescent. After discovering Matisse and Cézanne in Paris, Kandinsky feels that a new path opens up. His landscapes no longer seek to copy nature, but to translate the emotion it provokes.
The transformation of Kandinsky's landscapes: techniques of progressive deconstruction
How do you go from a figurative landscape to total abstraction? Not all at once. Kandinsky proceeds methodically. First, he pushes the colors beyond realism. A tree becomes bright yellow, a mountain purple. Then he simplifies shapes into large colored masses, outlined by black contours that recall stained glass.
Look at Romantic Landscape (1911): you can still guess hills, perhaps a rider. But the essential is elsewhere. What matters is the play of colors with each other, their own emotional power. Kandinsky gradually liberates line and color from their descriptive function. Black lines no longer delineate objects; they create rhythms. Colored patches float freely in space.
Between 1910 and 1913, a revelation: "the object harms his paintings" (Source: Centre Pompidou). Figurative representation prevents the direct expression of what he calls the “inner necessity.” Landscapes then become pretexts, starting points towards something else. This progressive transformation is strategic: Kandinsky builds step by step the path to abstraction, without ever losing his audience along the way.
The three categories of landscapes in Kandinsky: impressions, improvisations and compositions
A passionate music lover, Kandinsky began organizing his works as early as 1910 like musical pieces. He established three categories that structure his approach:
- Impressions retain a foot in reality. One recognizes a landscape, a church, mountains. But already, the style is free, expressive
- Improvisations liberate the unconscious. It's pure emotion that guides the brush, like a musician improvises. In Improvisation 7 (1910), the forms seem to dance, dissolve
- Compositions crown the whole thing. Maturely thought out, preceded by studies, they synthesize the external world and the inner universe. Between 1910 and 1939, Kandinsky will only paint ten of them (Source: Centre Pompidou), as their elaboration is complex
This classification is not just a theoretical tool. It allows Kandinsky to precisely dose his progression towards lyric abstraction. In some Improvisations, a horse, a boat remain identifiable. In others, everything has disappeared in favor of pure colored dynamics.
From 1908 to 1914, this Munich period was incredibly fertile. Until World War I broke this momentum. Kandinsky, a Russian citizen, had to leave Germany. This exceptional creative parenthesis lasted six years. Six years that changed the history of art.
Lyric abstraction in Kandinsky's landscapes: color and emotion without reference
1912 marks the definitive turning point. Kandinsky's landscapes lose their last figurative references. Place for pure colored masses, lines that no longer define anything but create tensions, movements. It is lyric abstraction: a painting that speaks directly to emotions, without going through representation.
Unlike the cold geometric abstraction that will be born later, Kandinsky's remains charged with emotion. Each color conveys a feeling: deep blue evokes spirituality or melancholy, yellow radiates energy, black creates dramatic tensions. A true emotional grammar of colors.
In 1912, Kandinsky theorized this approach in Concerning the Spiritual in Art, a foundational text. He affirms that painting can touch the soul of the viewer directly through the power of forms and colors alone, just as music does. An 1910 watercolor, long considered the first abstract work in history, symbolizes this revolution (Source: Centre Pompidou).
Even later, when he teaches at the Bauhaus (1922-1933) and adopts more geometric forms, something persists. An emotional vibration that goes back to the landscapes of Murnau. This sensitive memory never leaves him. Lyric abstraction thus retains a trace of the natural world, even after having completely abandoned it as a subject.
The legacy of Kandinsky's abstract landscapes in abstract landscaping
Kandinsky's demonstration opens up an immense door: a landscape can exist without representation. It only takes colors and shapes to evoke a feeling of nature, an emotion in the face of the world. Abstract landscaping is born, a term that refers to these abstract paintings where nature intrudes through sensation rather than representation.
Alfred Manessier, for example, abandons figuration after contemplating the tide marks in the Bay of Somme. Zao Wou-Ki draws on an unconscious memory of Chinese landscapes. They all inherit from Kandinsky. In 1947, the exhibition "L'Imaginaire" formalizes French lyrical abstraction (Source: Wikipedia), directly extending his intuition. Across the Atlantic, American abstract expressionism will follow suit.
Even today, this quest continues. Contemporary artists are exploring how to translate the emotion of a landscape without representing it. To discover these modern creations that extend Kandinsky's legacy, contemporary landscape paintings offer a panorama of this still-living quest.
Ultimately, Kandinsky proves something essential: figuration and abstraction are not opposites. They are two different languages for saying the same thing - emotion in the face of the world. Landscapes become states of mind, chromatic symphonies. And somewhere, within these whirlwinds of pure colors, still resonates the echo of the mountains of Murnau.
FAQ: Kandinsky's Landscapes
What work marks Kandinsky’s shift towards abstraction?
The 1910 watercolor, long considered his first abstract work, symbolically marks this transition. However, the transition takes place gradually between 1910 and 1913, with works such as Romantic Landscape (1911) and Composition VII (1913) which show the evolution towards total lyrical abstraction.
Why did Kandinsky classify his works into Impressions, Improvisations and Compositions?
Passionate about music, Kandinsky establishes this classification to reflect different degrees of spontaneity and elaboration, exactly as in music. Impressions retain a link with visible nature, Improvisations express the unconscious, and Compositions - the most accomplished - synthesize these two dimensions over time.
How did Murnau influence Kandinsky’s style?
This Bavarian village offers Kandinsky a creative laboratory between 1908 and 1914. The alpine landscapes, the local glass paintings, and collaboration with other artists such as Gabriele Münter trigger his pictorial revolution. It was in Murnau that he discovered that color could exist independently of its subject, opening the way to abstraction.
