Improvisation No. 2 Funeral March (study)

The finished Improvisation 2, subtitled Funeral March, is a canvas about 1.3 metres wide in Stockholm. It was bought for the Swedish national collection in 1933, the year the Nazis took power in Germany and Kandinsky left for Paris, and it now belongs to Moderna Museet. This board is the study for it, and it already holds the whole cast. Three women in what look like old Russian clothes are gathered at the front, a fourth sits a little apart on the right, and from the left a rider comes in on a white horse. The subtitle, taken from music, sets the mood, muted and grave. A deep blue band cuts the figures off from the scene behind, and the Lenbachhaus reads it as water, with two big coloured blocks for rocks or mountains and a round shape between them for a cloud. Every one of the figures is cut off by the edge of the picture.