Improvvisazione 21

By 1911 Wassily Kandinsky had spent two decades painting recognisable Russian and Bavarian scenes, and in Munich that year he was quietly dismantling them. He called canvases like this one Improvisations, works he said came from something inner and unplanned rather than from a view in front of him. He was also finishing his book on the spiritual in art and, that December, breaking away with friends to form the group known as the Blue Rider. The image here is nearly gone, though not quite. Under the whitish grey and the bright patches you can still make out a small boat with oars, pulling against a choppy sea, a bright sun on one side and a dark bank of cloud on the other.