Peinture au centre vert

Kandinsky painted this in Munich in 1913, at the moment he was pushing further into pure abstraction than almost anyone had dared. He had come to believe that colours and shapes could work directly on the soul, the way music does, without needing to picture anything at all. So he lets loose a swirl of lines, patches and half-formed shapes across the canvas, anchored only by the calm green form near the middle that gives the work its title. Traces of a landscape or a battle may flicker in and out, but nothing settles into a clear scene. Within a year the First World War would drive Kandinsky, a Russian, out of Germany and scatter this Munich circle. The green heart of the picture holds the whirl of colour around it in place.