Пейзаж близ Мурнау с локомотивом

Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter found Murnau in 1908 on a trip out of Munich, and in August 1909 she bought a house in the village, which the locals took to calling the Russians' House. Murnau sat on the railway running south from Munich towards the mountains, a little over an hour away, and that line is what crosses the lower half of this picture, a small train dragging its smoke along behind it under the hills. The painting comes from that same summer, with the houses and slopes pushed down into flat blocks of colour. Solomon Guggenheim bought Kandinskys straight from the artist at Dessau in 1930, and this one travelled to New York with that founding group of pictures.