Sketch for Composition V

In December 1911 the Munich artists' society Kandinsky had helped to found, the Neue Künstlervereinigung, turned down his Composition V for its winter show. The jury's stated reason was size, since the canvas was bigger than the society's rules allowed. Kandinsky walked out, and so did Franz Marc and Gabriele Münter, two painters close to him. That same month they opened a rival exhibition in Munich under a new name, the Blue Rider. This canvas is a study for the rejected picture, painted in Germany the same year. The finished Composition V, built around the theme of the Last Judgment and now in a private collection in Switzerland, is crossed by a long, heavy black line, and that line already sweeps across this study. The sketch stayed in private hands until the Hermitage bought it in 1969, and today it hangs in the General Staff Building in Saint Petersburg.