Kandinsky emigrated from Russia to Munich, where he helped found the German Expressionist movement Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) in 1911. He soon became a pioneer of abstract art, eliminating recognizable objects and figures from his work. Kandinsky, who believed that art should not depend on its resemblance to nature (the two being separate entities), wrote of "what the spectator lives or feels while under the effect of the form and color combinations of the picture." A painting such as this one shows how, by improvising color and form according to his mood, he could create a world unto itself.

      In several important treatises on art, Kandinsky often drew analogies between the visual arts and music. A teacher for several years at the Bauhaus, the famous German school of design, he has had a major effect on twentieth-century art.

-JAW