São Jorge (II)

Kandinsky painted this in 1911, the year he and the painter Franz Marc were assembling the Blue Rider almanac in Bavaria. He had fallen for the local folk craft of painting saints in bright colors on the back of glass, and Saint George, the dragon-slayer on horseback, was a favorite in those villages and became one of his own recurring figures. You can still make out the white horse, the rider, the lance and the small dragon below, but Kandinsky is already pulling the outlines loose, letting patches of red, blue and green float almost free of the tale. He was only a year or two from painting with no recognizable subject at all. A glass version of this same Saint George became the cover of the almanac.