by Tom Gurney
Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Published on June 19, 2020 / Updated on October 14, 2023
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
Black Lines by Wassily Kandinsky: Introduction
Across a near-square field, thin black strokes run over islands of yellow, green, blue, red and violet. The coloured forms seem to swell and drift, while the dark marks interrupt their soft edges and send the eye in competing directions. Wassily Kandinsky's Black Lines (Schwarze Linien) is catalogued by the Guggenheim as an oil on canvas made in December 1913, measuring 130.5 × 131.1 cm. It belongs to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum's Founding Collection in New York, inventory 37.241. [1]; [2].
The inherited page called it the first work in a Black Lines series and identified three horses, St George and a Moscow scene. The Guggenheim records this particular painting as a major early nonobjective work and supplies none of those figures. Its teaching materials discuss a troika represented by three black lines in another 1913 canvas, Painting with White Border. This page therefore treats Black Lines on its own terms rather than transferring a different painting's documented imagery. [3]; [6].
Watch: Wassily Kandinsky
Five museum videos about Kandinsky’s art, sources of inspiration and the relationship between colour and music.
Vasily Kandinsky: Around the Circle
Curator Megan Fontanella introduces Kandinsky and the Guggenheim collection.
Watch on YouTubeAt a Glance
- Artist and date:Wassily Kandinsky, December 1913.
- Original title:Schwarze Linien; English Black Lines.
- Medium and dimensions:Oil on canvas, 130.5 × 131.1 cm.
- Collection:Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Founding Collection, by gift 37.241.
- Subject status:Guggenheim treats the painting as among Kandinsky's first fully abstract works; no identifiable horse or saint subject is documented for it.
- Related distinct work:Light Picture (Helles Bild), also December 1913, has its own object record and separate commentary.
- Image:Existing site reproduction retained; no newly licensed museum photograph added.
Where this work sits in Kandinsky’s career
The Blue Rider
1903Composition VII
1913Composition VIII
1923Several Circles
1926Sky Blue
1940Contents
- Colour that seems to float
- The lines over the paint
- The December 1913 threshold
- Collection and image
- Frequently asked questions
- References
Colour that seems to float
The picture does not have a conventional centre occupied by a person, building or horizon. Instead, rounded and irregular colour patches spread across the pale ground. A large yellow-orange area pushes in from the upper right. Below it are blue and red forms; at lower left, lighter yellow marks make an almost open loop. Green sweeps across the top and lower left, while a bright red strip hugs the right edge. These regions do not settle into a single continuous landscape. Their changing size and density make some appear close and others remote even though the canvas remains visibly flat. [5].
Nancy Spector's Guggenheim account calls attention to undulating coloured ovals and the different depths they seem to suggest. That is a useful starting point, not a claim that every shape is an exact ellipse. Several edges are irregular, softened by paint, or pressed against marks of another colour. The forms feel like they move because the eye cannot hold them at one stable distance. A violet-rimmed curve at upper left seems to arc away from a blue sweep; a bright red and blue group near the bottom seems to come forward. These impressions arise from the visual relationships, not from a mapped three-dimensional setting. [5].
The pale areas are active too. They give coloured forms breathing room and allow the thinnest dark marks to remain visible. On the right, the white oval within a yellow surround is interrupted by short horizontal strokes. At lower left, pale yellow loops frame an area of open ground. If those spaces were solidly filled, the black lines would have less room to work as independent movements. The design depends on intervals between pigment as much as on the bright pigment itself. [1].
The lines over the paint
The title directs attention to the thin dark strokes, but they are not all alike. A loose arc at upper left crosses broad colour; sharp short marks cluster over the yellow-orange area near the upper right; scattered scratch-like groups appear over blue and red near the bottom. Some lines join coloured patches, while others interrupt them. Their distribution keeps the eye moving around the square field rather than following a single narrative path. [5].
The Guggenheim's 2021 exhibition text notes that these thin marks were painted so as to resemble pen drawing. Their graphic look is striking because the object itself is catalogued as oil on canvas. A viewer should not infer an actual pen medium from the appearance of the marks in a small reproduction. The lines' two-dimensional sharpness sits above softly varying colour, setting up a tension between what reads like drawing and what reads like drifting paint. [4]; [2].
This tension is easy to misread as a search for hidden figures. Black lines elsewhere in Kandinsky's 1913 art can compress horses, riders or lances; the museum's teaching guide identifies a troika in Painting with White Border. But the same source does not attach that iconography to Black Lines. In this painting the marks can operate as strokes, contours, collisions and directional cues without needing to resolve into three horses. The article that previously supplied a St George scene had no object-specific evidence for it. [6]; [3].
The December 1913 threshold
A Guggenheim essay places Black Lines and the distinct Light Picture among Kandinsky's first paintings to dispense fully with recognisable subject matter in December 1913. The museum describes Black Lines as having no narrative or descriptive content. This is an art-historical judgement about its design, not a declaration that all earlier Kandinsky paintings were straightforward pictures of things. Earlier works had already pushed representation toward abstraction through riders, landscapes, deluge motifs and near-unrecognisable forms. Black Lines makes the relation between colour and line itself the main event. [3].
The essay quotes Kandinsky telling Hilla Rebay that a painting had “nothing whatever to do with an object,” but in its account that phrase refers to Light Picture. The Guggenheim's later press kit states that Black Lines, too, lacks reference to the natural world by Kandinsky's own testimony. These two pieces of evidence should remain separate: a direct quotation associated in the essay with one canvas, and a museum's attributed summary about another. Neither supplies horses, Moscow architecture or a saint for Black Lines. [3]; [4].
The year matters in Kandinsky's career. In 1913 he was working in Munich, before his wartime return to Russia and long before he taught at the Bauhaus. The older article was broadly correct to place the painting at an especially abstract moment, but its idea that it was part of a numbered Black Lines series is not established by the collection record. Museum discussions instead group it with other individual canvases of late 1913, particularly Light Picture. Similar titles in secondary image sites cannot by themselves prove a planned numbered series by the artist. [3]; [1].
The nearly square scale also changes the act of looking. At just over 1.3 metres on each side, the original is a substantial canvas, not the small paper study suggested by many online images. From a distance the rounded colours dominate; close up, the finer dark marks would be easier to separate. The existing 400 × 407 site image is useful for overall composition but cannot verify individual brush edges or surface texture. The cited dimensions and medium come from the owner, not a measurement inferred from the web file. [2].
Collection and image
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum catalogues Black Lines as a gift in its Founding Collection, inventory 37.241. A collection record proves institutional ownership, not that the painting is continuously on view in one gallery. Its inclusion in Guggenheim exhibition material shows that it has been displayed and interpreted publicly, but visitors should check a current display notice before travelling to see it. [1].
The existing splash on this page remains in place. Guggenheim pages and publicity materials credit the artwork and reproduction, but the records used here do not grant a clear new licence for copying a larger museum image into this site or the planned artist guide. The guide can be text-led for this entry unless a separately licensed image is found easily. The object description and the distinction from Painting with White Border are already valuable without a new photograph. [2].
Black Lines rewards looking back and forth between two different kinds of movement. Colour seems to expand in rounded, floating fields; the narrow dark marks gather, pierce and redirect it. The museum's account of a nonobjective painting makes sense of that experience without reducing the work to an illustrated theory or a puzzle with one hidden subject. [5]; [3].
Kandinsky artworks directory
Frequently Asked Questions
The Guggenheim dates Schwarze Linien to December 1913. [2].
It is oil on canvas, 130.5 × 131.1 cm. The thin lines may resemble pen drawing, but the museum catalogues them within an oil painting. [2]; [4].
The Guggenheim treats Black Lines as a nonobjective painting. Its guide documents troika lines in a separate 1913 canvas, Painting with White Border, not in this work. [3]; [6].
The cited owner records identify this painting, Schwarze Linien, but do not establish it as the first in a numbered series. The inherited claim should not be repeated without object-specific evidence. [2].
The Guggenheim discusses both as distinct December 1913 canvases in Kandinsky's move to fully nonobjective painting. The quoted “nothing whatever to do with an object” remark in its essay is connected there to Light Picture. [3].
It belongs to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Founding Collection, by gift, inventory 37.241. A current display location should be checked separately. [2].
Discussion
What do you notice first in Black Lines? Share a close observation or a question about the evidence for this work.
Comments are for comparing what we see and what the cited sources establish.
Reader Insights
Which dark marks interrupt a coloured form most strongly?
How does the pale ground change the apparent depth of the floating colours?
What evidence distinguishes this canvas from the troika imagery documented in Painting with White Border?
Join the Conversation
Add your observation below and tell us which part of the artwork led you to it.
References
- Guggenheim Bilbao, Kandinsky exhibition and object record. View source.
- Guggenheim Bilbao, collection press image listing. View source.
- Guggenheim, “Nothing Whatever to Do with an Object”—Kandinsky's First Abstract Works. View source.
- Guggenheim, Vasily Kandinsky: Around the Circle press kit. View source.
- Guggenheim, Nancy Spector's Black Lines curatorial text. View source.
- Guggenheim, Kandinsky teaching materials. View source.
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