Rapallo - Bay

In the years Kandinsky spent travelling with the painter Gabriele Münter, she kept a Kodak roll-film camera with her at all times. Wherever the two of them stopped, in Tunis, in Paris, in Rapallo on the Italian Riviera, they came back with photographs, drawings and oil sketches made in front of the view. This is one of his from Rapallo, painted early in 1906 on a piece of cardboard about 24 by 33 centimetres. He laid the colour on with a knife and barely mixed it, so it sits in thick separate strokes. It shows most in the water, where the green headland and the pale houses on top break up into ridges of blue, pink and yellow.