Kochel - Straight road

In 1909 the paintings of Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter and Alexej Jawlensky, who were working side by side in and around Murnau, came closer to one another than at any other point in their careers. They shared an idea of the picture as a synthesis, Jawlensky's word, cutting single forms down and concentrating the means, which Münter called giving an extract. She painted a Straight Road of her own in 1910, now in a private collection. This board goes further than anything Kandinsky had painted before. A pale blue road runs dead straight toward a pointed, dark blue mountain in the middle of the picture, its tip just clipped by the top edge, and the land around is pulled together into a few flat shapes. To the left of the road two people are working in a field. They are drawn with the same brown lines he uses for the trees.