Murnau - Mountain Landscape with Church

When war broke out in 1914, Kandinsky had to leave Germany within days, and most of his work stayed in Munich with Gabriele Münter, the painter who had been his companion since 1903. In 1917 he married another woman in Moscow. After the war he asked for his belongings back, nearly all his pre-war paintings included. Münter went to court and demanded compensation for the shame he had brought on her. The case was settled in 1926. A great deal went back to Kandinsky, but Münter kept almost 1,000 of his works, and this small board is one of those that remained with her. He painted it in the summer of 1910, in oil on cardboard about 45 centimetres wide, hills and a church with mountains behind, and signed it KANDINSKY in grey at the lower left. On the back, probably in his own hand, is a single word, Kirche, church.