Composition VII (study 2)

In the autumn of 1913 Kandinsky was preparing his largest canvas yet, Composition VII, two metres by three, now in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. The Lenbachhaus counts at least 21 drawings and watercolours and six larger oil studies made for it, and this is one of those six. At first sight it looks like pure turmoil, colours of different thickness and depth floating in front of one another, piling up in places and crossed by bundles of coloured and black lines. One thing was settled from the start. Across the many studies the centre stays the same, a concentric ring of colour cut through by two lines. Another detail belongs to this study alone, a dull, empty band along the bottom edge. In the finished picture in Moscow the colours there are pulled down as if into a funnel, and at the lower left a rowing boat appears, a clear pointer to the biblical themes of flood and judgement behind the whole series.