Great Resurrection

In early summer 1911 Kandinsky painted this resurrection on the back of an almost square pane of glass, about 24 centimetres each way. At the upper left an angel sounds the trumpet that wakes the dead, and the museum's tags name hills, a figure, a musical instrument and the Bible. The ground is laid in silver bronze, a metallic paint, and one of the museum's tags for the picture is simply black and white. Kandinsky did not leave the composition on glass. He cut it in wood as a colour print with the same title, Great Resurrection, and the sheet went into Klänge, Sounds, his book of 38 prose poems and 56 woodcuts. He had written the poems between 1909 and 1911, and the Munich publisher Piper brought the book out only in 1913, in an edition of 345 copies. In the woodcut the trumpeting angel at the upper left is printed in blue.