Munich - English Garden

Kandinsky painted this in the Englischer Garten in Munich in September 1901, on a board small enough to carry out with him, in thick separate strokes laid on fast. He was 34 and had been a painter for five years, having walked away from a law career in Moscow to come and study. That same year he and several others set up an artists' association in Munich called Phalanx, with exhibition rooms and, shortly after, a school of its own. Among the students who enrolled in his painting class in 1902 was Gabriele Munter. She held on to his early work for the rest of her life, kept it hidden in her house at Murnau through the Nazi years, and in 1957 handed the city of Munich more than 90 of his paintings made before 1914, which is how this small park study ended up hanging a short walk from the park.