Fishing Boats, Sestri

By the end of 1905 Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter had spent two years mostly on the road, in the Netherlands, in Tunisia, in Dresden, rather than at home in Munich. That December they reached the Ligurian coast and rented a house on via Montebello in Rapallo, where they stayed until the end of April. He painted that stretch of sea again and again through the winter, on boards small enough to hold in one hand while he worked outside. This is one of them, oil on canvas board, roughly 24 by 33 centimetres, from Sestri along the same coast.

Kandinsky is remembered for leaving the visible world behind, and here he is painting fishing boats where they were moored. The board belongs to the founding collection Solomon R. Guggenheim gave to his museum in New York.