オーバーマルクトのムルナウの家々

In the summer of 1908 Kandinsky and the painter Gabriele Münter, his companion, found a small Bavarian town called Murnau, under the Alps, and it changed how he worked. This is its main street, the Obermarkt. The buildings are still recognisable, but the colour has started to come loose from them, laid on in strong flat blocks that answer to Kandinsky more than to the houses. He was about two years from painting the first pictures with no subject at all, and you can feel the colour straining to break free here. The canvas went missing for a time and turned up wrapped in a Munich newspaper dated 1908, which is part of how we know when he stood on that street.