Schwabing - Nikolai Square

Anyone who knows Nikolaiplatz in Schwabing today knows it for the Seidlvilla, a large gabled house that the architect Emanuel von Seidl built on the square in 1905 for Franziska Lautenbacher, whose money came from her first husband, one of the owners of the Spaten brewery. In the 1970s the villa came close to demolition, and the residents who saved it argued for the whole green cluster of buildings around the square, which had grown up since about 1900. Kandinsky painted the square a few years before the villa existed, in the winter of 1901 into 1902, and the museum dates it only to that winter. Its catalogue tags the picture with snow, houses, figures and the colour blue. The board is small, about 24 by 32 centimetres, oil on canvas-covered cardboard, and he signed it KANDINSKY in red at the lower right.