Entwurf zu Komposition IV, 1911, is a rare and essential record of the process behind Wassily Kandinsky’s Compositions, a series of ten works executed between 1909 and 1939. The present work is a preparatory work for Composition IV, 1911, which now resides at the Kunstsammlung Nordrheim-Westfalen in Düsseldorf. As Compositions I-III were destroyed in World War II, Composition IV is the first extant iteration of the series and also the first of the group to turn more fully towards abstraction.ⁱ As Kandinsky himself explained, the Compositions are distinguished from his other bodies of work by their mural-like scale; the centering of “pure painting”—which, for Kandinsky, signified the expression of the soul of the artist—rather than representational subject matter; and the deliberate (versus improvisational) manner of their creation. As we look back across the twentieth century, Kandinsky’s works from 1911 can be viewed as the genesis of a course of abstraction that meets its apex in the work of the Abstract Expressionists nearly half a century later. 

 

With Entwurf zu Komposition IV, Kandinsky created a block print in black ink, and then painted rich watercolor washes over the composition. These formal qualities provide an incredible insight into the process behind Composition IV. With the compositional details of the work determined by the print, Kandinsky is free to play with color in the present work, and determine how he will use blue, red, yellow, and green to the desired effect in the final Composition IV. His embrace of printmaking into his painting process indicates the lasting influence of Jugendstil, the German Arts and Crafts movement of the late 1890s, and Kandinsky’s appreciation of loubki Russian folk prints, which Magdelena Dabrowski notes “provided a new source of motifs, an abstract treatment of space, a coloristic quality, and the directness of meaning that affected [Kandinsky] on formal and spiritual levels.”ⁱⁱ

 

Color plays an essential role in Kandinsky’s practice. The Russian-born artist is famous for the spiritual and emotional resonance he found in color, as articulated in his treatise, On the Spiritual in Art, in 1911. Published the same year as Entwurf zu Komposition IV’s creation, On the Spiritual in Art argued that colors have both a physical and psychological effect that activates the viewer’s very soul. Kandinsky associated colors with feelings, moods, sounds, tastes, and other synesthetic phenomena: “vermillion attracts and pleases the eye as does flame, which men always regard covetously,” he wrote. “Bright lemon yellow hurts the eye after a short time, as a high note on the trumpet hurts the ear. The eye becomes disturbed, cannot bear it any longer, and seeks depth and repose in blue or green.”ⁱⁱⁱ Such peaks and valleys of emotional experience cast across the composition of the present work.

 

In Entwurf zu Komposition IV, as in the larger Composition IV, painted color holds more significance than representational form. As Dabrowski explains, Composition IV engages “hidden imagery,” which allows Kandinsky to pursue his abstract, colorist goals without completely sacrificing representational subject matter.^iv In Entwurf zu Komposition IV, then, a discerning viewer can pick out the red hats of three Cossacks holding two black lances at center, standing below a blue mountain, with a green fortress on top. There is a rainbow bridge to the left, with boats, and the black arches of men fighting on horseback. Two figures, one red-faced, the other blue, recline at bottom right, while above them, two figures in blue and green robes observe the scene. 

 

However, the viewer’s ability to identify every motif in the present work was not Kandinsky’s primary concern. In the artist’s commentary on Composition IV, published with the first monograph of his work in 1913, Kandinsky did not pick out these individual representational elements for his reader. Instead, he drew their attention to line, color, and the emotional impact of their juxtaposition in the work. He wrote: “lower center—blue (gives the whole picture a cold tone); upper right—divided blue, red, yellow; upper left—black lines of the entangled horses; lower right—extended lines of reclining figures.”^v The composition’s symbolic meaning depends on the contrast “between entangled line and entangled color, and principal contrast: between angular, sharp movement (battle) and light-cold-sweet colors,” not on the specific cultural meanings of representational forms.^vi

 

The mission of Entwurf zu Komposition IV, then, is to draw out this “principal contrast” between line and color, and the attendant symbolic meaning of this formal juxtaposition. As Dabrowski and others have suggested, Composition IV may symbolize the delicate balance between violence and peaceful harmony, values represented by line (indicated as a “battle” by Kandinsky), and “light-cold-sweet colors,” in turn.^vii Other scholars posit wider connections to innovations in music and philosophy in Munich  around 1911, and the dynamic, fractured movement between line and color in the work also evokes Italian Futurism, which was developing concurrently to Der Blaue Reiter.^viii Regardless of Kandinsky’s particular symbolic intent, the medium of block print and watercolor provides an inherent, extra distinction between line and color, which perhaps aided Kandinsky in determining his final Composition IV.
 

Entwurf zu Komposition IV was the basis for a color plate illustration in the deluxe editions of Der Blaue Reiter Almanach, the premier publication of Der Blaue Reiter, a group co-founded by Kandinsky. Der Blaue Reiter was one of the most influential avant-garde movements of the 20^th century, and the Almanach, published in 1912 and 1914, was an incredible expression of the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk: it was a total work of modern art, in literary, typographical, and artistic terms. Reinhard Piper, publisher of Der Blaue Reiter Almanach, was the first owner of Entwurf zu Komposition IV, and a note in his hand, now lost, confirmed that Kandinsky's watercolor was the basis for the Almanach color plate.^ix Only a few artworks were chosen to be reproduced as color plates in the limited, deluxe editions of fifty; the inclusion of Entwurf zu Komposition IV, and its presence in Piper's collection, speaks to the work's potent crystallization of German Expressionist ideals. The work thus represents the development and influence of Kandinsky’s work beyond his individual practice, as one of the defining artistic personalities of his time. Entwurf zu Komposition IV is an invaluable part of his creative process, and a rare insight into Kandinsky’s first, vanguard steps into abstractions that would redefine the course of twentieth century art.

 

 

ⁱ  Magdalena Dabrowski, Kandinsky: Compositions, exh. cat., The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1995, p. 31.

ⁱⁱ  Dabrowski, p. 15.

ⁱⁱⁱ Wassily Kandinsky, “On the Spiritual in Art,” in Kenneth C. Lindsay and Peter Vergo, eds., Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art, G. K. Hall & Co., Boston, 1982, p. 157.

^iv  Dabrowski, p. 16.

^v  Kandinsky (1913), quoted ibid., p. 32.

^vi  Ibid.

^vii  Dabrowski, p. 32.

^viii  Ibid., p. 33.

^ix  Vivian Endicott Barnett, Kandinsky: Drawings, vol. I: Individual Drawings, cat. rais., Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, 2006, p. 35.