Tableau à l'archer

In 1909 Kandinsky was living in Germany but spending long stretches in Murnau, a small town in the Bavarian Alps he loved for its folk art, especially the bright little pictures painted on glass. The place reminded him of the rural Russia he had left behind, and both worlds crowd into this canvas. A horseman gallops beneath the trees, twisting in the saddle to draw his bow, while men in Russian dress stand nearby and an onion-domed tower rises behind. The colours have begun to come loose from the things they describe, patches of vivid paint almost swallowing the rider and the hills. Kandinsky had already written down his argument for an art of pure colour and form. Here he is halfway there, the folktale still just visible underneath.