Akhtyrka, Framework for a Pile of Hay and Farm

Kandinsky married Nina Andreevskaya in Moscow in February 1917, a few weeks before the Tsar abdicated. They honeymooned in Finland and then spent the summer at Akhtyrka, a country place outside Moscow he had painted at before. What came out of that summer were things like this, the wooden frame that a haystack is built around and the farm buildings behind it, on a loose sheet of canvas 23 centimetres high. The man who had spent seven years making pictures with no recognisable object in them was standing in a field with a small paintbox, putting down exactly what was in front of him. Nina outlived him by 36 years and left the whole estate to the Pompidou Centre in Paris, where this arrived in 1981.