Untitled (Study for Improvisation I)

Kandinsky painted this small canvas in Munich in 1908 or 1909, and it has long been linked to the first of his numbered Improvisations. The Centre Pompidou, which owns it, now lists it simply as untitled. A dark horse and rider loom at the centre, and around them stand people in long robes, some alone, some in tight groups, set against bands of blue, green and pink.

The canvas came to Paris through Nina Kandinsky, the painter's widow. She had married him in Moscow in 1917, and after his death in 1944 she kept his remaining work together. She gave the Pompidou one large group of paintings in 1976 and another in early 1980. That September she was killed in her chalet at Gstaad, in Switzerland, and this study entered the museum's inventory in 1981 as part of her bequest.