Impression V

In 1911 Kandinsky was pulling away from recognisable subjects faster than almost anyone in Europe, and this canvas catches him mid-step. Look closely and a park is still there: two riders on horseback, cut down to a few black lines, set against a large red triangle. He called the picture an Impression, one of a small group he named that year after musical terms, alongside his Improvisations and Compositions. The idea was that painting could work on you the way music does, through colour and shape rather than a scene you recognise. That same year he helped found the Blaue Reiter circle of artists in Munich and published his book on the spiritual in art. Those two horsemen are among the last real things he still let survive on a canvas like this.