Oriental

In May 1910 Munich opened the largest exhibition of Islamic art Europe had yet seen, some 3,600 objects from more than 260 collections, laid out in 80 pavilions on the Theresienhöhe. Kandinsky went, and reviewed it for Apollon, a journal in St Petersburg for which he was writing regular letters from Munich. He had eyes almost only for the Persian miniatures. This picture came before all that. The museum dates it 1909, and its own provenance record even says 1908. Figures in headdresses gather among hills and plants, with domed buildings behind them, on a large sheet of cardboard almost a metre wide. The theme stayed with him. A few years later he cut a woodcut with the same title for Klänge, his book of prose poems and prints.