Kandinsky - Black lines

Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) discovered painting quite late. An expressionist and member of the Blaue Reiter, his forms, large flat surfaces animated by graphics, gradually lost their connection with reality without, however, becoming completely abstract.

With its undulating colored ovals crossed by lively brushstrokes, "Black Lines" is among Kandinsky's first truly abstract paintings. The network of fine, agitated lines indicates a two-dimensional graphic sensibility, while the floating forms in vibrant hues suggest different spatial depths.

By 1913, Kandinsky's aesthetic theories and aspirations were well developed. He valued pictorial abstraction as the most effective stylistic means for revealing hidden aspects of the empirical world, expressing subjective realities, aspiring to the metaphysical, and offering a regenerative vision of the future. Kandinsky intended the evocative power of carefully chosen and dynamically interrelated colors, shapes, and lines to elicit specific responses from the viewers of his paintings. An artist's inner vision, he believed, could thus be translated into a universally accessible statement.

Black Lines, 1913 (Guggenheim New York)

© ADAGP 2009