1909 -1917 · Color, music and the birth of abstraction

In his Improvisations, Kandinsky lets colors, lines and rhythms directly translate an inner necessity, between memories of landscapes and emerging abstraction.

Kandinsky distinguishes three families in his painting: Impressions, still linked to an experience of the visible world; Improvisations, born more spontaneously from an inner movement; and Compositions, prepared at length. Developed especially between 1909 and 1917, the Improvisations series accompanies the painter's decisive transition towards abstraction. Horsemen, boats, bell towers, mountains, cannons or floods can still emerge, but they dissolve in a space where color and line act as autonomous forces. Horsemen, boats, bell towers, mountains, cannons or deluges can still emerge, but they dissolve in a space where color and line act as autonomous forces. Horsemen, boats, bell towers, mountains, cannons or deluges can still emerge, but they dissolve in a space where color and line act as autonomous forces. The musical title therefore does not describe an uncontrolled execution: it evokes an open image, driven by rhythm, chords and dissonances. Of Munich to Murnau, then during the war years, Kandinsky gradually transformed the recognizable scene into a pictorial event. The numbers in the series do not impose a continuous narration; rather, they mark a laboratory where each painting experiences a new balance between gesture, color and reminiscence. The selection "Improvisations of Wassily Kandinsky" notably compares Improvisation 209 and Improvisation 33 (Orient I). His reading favors composition.

Kandinskian improvisation does not copy the visible: it organizes tensions of color and line like music addressed directly to the eye.