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
Improvisation 21 a by Wassily Kandinsky: Introduction
A broad pale field crosses this canvas, cutting into coloured hills and a restless assembly of lines. A dark shape at the right can begin to look like a boat, while short marks farther left suggest riders. None of these forms settles into the continuous space of an ordinary landscape. The Lenbachhaus identifies the work as Wassily Kandinsky's Improvisation 21 a, painted in 1911 in oil on canvas, measuring 96 × 105 cm. Its inventory number is GMS 82. The museum's account provides an unusually useful comparison: a small reverse-glass painting, Mit Sonne (With the Sun), made that year, helped inspire this canvas. [1].
The comparison makes the surviving hints of figures and places easier to see, but it also shows how much Kandinsky changed. The glass picture names a sun and depicts riders, towers and a boat more explicitly. On the canvas, those elements lose clarity within veils of greyish white and across a more fractured field of colour. The result is not a coded copy of the glass work; it is a distinct painting in which recognisable motifs and their dissolution are both part of the experience. [1]; [2].
Annotated details in Improvisation 21 a
Select a numbered point to examine three close views of the work.
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Details from IMPROVISATION 21 A
Three close views of the work.
Open centre
Pale areas leave space among the compressed coloured forms.
Red curve
A red arc carries the eye across the middle of the canvas.
Dense upper edge
Dark marks and blue forms crowd the upper right.
Reproduction from the linked collection record, CC0 1.0. View image source and terms.
Watch: Wassily Kandinsky
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Vasily Kandinsky: Around the Circle
Curator Megan Fontanella introduces Kandinsky and the Guggenheim collection.
Watch on YouTubeAt a Glance
- Artist and title:Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation 21 a.
- Date:1911, according to the owning collection.
- Medium and size:Oil on canvas, 96 × 105 cm.
- Collection:Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München, inventory GMS 82; Gabriele Münter Foundation gift, 1957.
- Inscription:Signed lower left,
KANDINSKY 1911. - Related works:The separate 1911 reverse-glass Mit Sonne (GMS 120) and the later oil Kleine Freuden (Small Pleasures, June 1913, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 43.921).
- Image:Existing site splash retained. The Lenbachhaus marks its larger download for this exact object CC0 1.0; an unchanged copy is saved as an optional artist-guide image.
Where this work sits in Kandinsky’s career
The Blue Rider
1903Composition VII
1913Composition VIII
1923Several Circles
1926Sky Blue
1940Contents
- Annotated details
- Reading the canvas from its forms
- From Mit Sonne to Improvisation 21 a
- The later Small Pleasures
- Identity, collection and image
- Frequently asked questions
- References
Reading the canvas from its forms
Begin with the conspicuous pale passage, rather than trying to name every small mark. It is neither an empty sky nor a simple wall. Its greyish white stretches between and across stronger colours, slowing the eye as it moves from the crowded left side toward the darker right. Blue, yellow, green and red remain visible around it. Dark strokes partly gather into contours and partly run free of the objects they might describe. The Lenbachhaus notes that the figurative signs inherited from Mit Sonne are obscured here, and that the glass picture's bright colours are subdued. Those are useful observations about what the canvas does to an earlier pictorial idea. [1].
At the right, an elongated dark-bordered form encourages a boat reading. It does not become a perspectival vessel in a neatly bounded stretch of water. Near the middle, uneven rises and upright marks can evoke hills and buildings without providing a mappable town. Toward the left, small energetic forms can be read against the riders visible in the related glass picture. The owner record itself tags boat, hill, building, city and rider. These terms name motifs or suggestions that the museum has recognised; they do not mean that each edge on the canvas can be assigned a single stable object. [1].
The title offers a further clue to how to look. Improvisation does not identify a recorded event, and the suffix a is part of the work's catalogue title. It would be easy to treat the painting as an abstract scene with an invisible key: find a horse, find a tower, find a boat, then declare the puzzle solved. Yet the surface keeps pushing those possible objects back into coloured space. A rider-like mark matters in relation to the pale passage beside it; the dark shape at right matters as both a boat suggestion and a strong visual weight. The painting asks for sustained looking across the whole field. [1].
This distinction helps correct the inherited site page. Its account of rolling hills made the image sound like a settled countryside view, while its broad remarks about the artist did little to identify this exact object. The Lenbachhaus's pairing with Mit Sonne gives a more precise way in: the hills and towers were part of Kandinsky's working vocabulary, and the canvas alters how legibly that vocabulary appears. Calling the painted setting a specific Russian city, or naming its individual buildings, would go beyond the cited object record. [1].
From Mit Sonne to Improvisation 21 a
The Lenbachhaus links the canvas to Kandinsky's small reverse-glass Mit Sonne, also dated 1911. In the glass painting, ink and oil were placed behind ornamental glass within a painted frame. This technique produces a different kind of brilliance from oil on canvas. The glass work presents two central hills crowned by tower forms reminiscent of Russian onion domes. To the left, a reclining pair and three uphill riders can be picked out; the sun appears above. At the right, a boat with three rowers and a dark cloud complete a crowded arrangement. The museum describes these motifs when explaining the relation among the works, while the separate GMS 120 record secures the glass picture's identity. [1]; [2].
The glass picture is useful precisely because it is more legible. Its figures and objects can guide the eye back to marks on the larger canvas that might otherwise seem wholly detached from representation. But the canvas should not be described as if every glass detail had survived intact. The Lenbachhaus says that recognisable signs are partly concealed there, with the vivid palette tempered by greyish white. In other words, the relation is one of translation and transformation. The glass object acts as evidence of a shared set of motifs; it cannot replace looking at the oil painting. [1].
The museum also cites Kandinsky's recollection that delicate colours, gold and silver, and mirror-like passages in reverse-glass work prompted experiments on larger canvases. That is a statement about his working process and the material appeal of the glass medium. It does not license a claim that actual gold, silver or mirrored glass was attached to Improvisation 21 a, whose listed medium remains oil on canvas. The route from one medium to another helps explain why effects of shimmer, overlay and shifting visibility might matter here, while the object's catalogue description keeps its material facts clear. [1].
The two works also differ in scale. The modest glass painting invites close inspection of small figures and framed detail. At 96 × 105 cm, the oil is a substantial canvas on which a broad, pale sweep and dispersed dark strokes can compete with the underlying narrative hints. Reproductions flatten that difference; a viewer sees both as similarly sized rectangles on a screen. Keeping the media and dimensions in view prevents the comparison from turning into an assumption of identical visual effect. Lenbachhaus records for Improvisation 21 a and [2].
The later Small Pleasures
The Lenbachhaus goes on to relate this family of imagery to Kleine Freuden, generally called Small Pleasures in English. That is another, later work: an oil on canvas from June 1913, now at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, accession 43.921. Its documented date and holding place mean it cannot be used as an alternative title or location for the Lenbachhaus's 1911 Improvisation 21 a. The relationship is an artistic one across time, not a duplicate catalogue entry. [1]; [3].
The later painting offers a way to see Kandinsky revisiting motifs without simply repeating a composition. Hills, riders, architecture, sky and a boat can participate in different balances of line and colour as the artist moves from small glass to the 1911 canvas and then to the 1913 oil. The sequence is an invitation to compare how much narrative each image permits. A clear figure in one work can become a trace in another. Conversely, the existence of a trace does not prove that a viewer can recover an exact scene or story. [1].
The owner essay considers a darker, apocalyptic reading of these images in scholarship associated with Rose-Carol Washton Long and Sixten Ringbom: motifs such as riders, ominous cloud and threatened city can suggest destruction and hope. It also presents Kandinsky's own lighter remarks about Small Pleasures as a counterweight to assigning one fixed message to that later picture. These are different kinds of evidence. The scholars' proposal is an attributed interpretation of a related image family; Kandinsky's remarks concern Small Pleasures specifically. Neither should be silently converted into his stated explanation of the 1911 canvas. [1].
That caution need not strip the painting of emotional force. Even without naming a particular apocalypse, the dark cloud and compressed marks can feel uneasy against the luminous colour. The question is how to phrase the claim. “This group of images has been read in apocalyptic terms” reports a documented line of interpretation. “Kandinsky painted this as a depiction of the end of the world” asserts an intention for which the cited record provides no direct statement. The first leaves room to test the reading against what can actually be seen. [1].
Identity, collection and image
The Lenbachhaus lists Improvisation 21 a as GMS 82 and gives its dimensions as 96 × 105 cm. It records the signature at lower left, KANDINSKY 1911., and its arrival through the Gabriele Münter Foundation gift of 1957. Its live collection entry currently marks the work not on display. These details are especially useful where nearby works share a date, subject vocabulary or name. The inventory identifier attaches the article, image and historical account to one physical canvas. [1].
For this page, the existing image stays in place. It has been visually checked against the owner's object picture, so there is no dependency on finding a replacement. The Lenbachhaus also explicitly marks its downloadable image of GMS 82 as CC0 1.0. An unchanged 2000 × 1826 copy has been saved with source, licence and credit details as an optional candidate for the planned artist guide. That straightforward release makes it usable if the guide benefits from a larger picture. If a future image has ambiguous terms, the existing artwork image remains sufficient. [1]; [4].
What makes Improvisation 21 a distinctive is its intermediate state. It neither erases the riders, boat and tower-like forms nor lets them organize a stable view. Its glass precursor shows how specific some of those signs could be; the canvas shows Kandinsky making them work as colour, contour and partial memory. The later Small Pleasures demonstrates that this was a motif family he could return to, rather than a single image with one exhaustive translation. [1].
Kandinsky artworks directory
Frequently Asked Questions
The Lenbachhaus dates the oil painting 1911, and records a lower-left signature reading KANDINSKY 1911. [1].
It is oil on canvas, 96 × 105 cm. [1].
The owner identifies suggestions of a boat, hills, buildings, city and riders. Their forms are less explicit than in the related glass painting Mit Sonne, and a pale greyish-white field subdues the colours. [1].
No. Mit Sonne is a separate 1911 reverse-glass painting, Lenbachhaus GMS 120. It helped inspire the canvas Improvisation 21 a, which is GMS 82. Lenbachhaus records for Mit Sonne and [1].
Small Pleasures is a later, separate oil painting from June 1913 at the Guggenheim. The Lenbachhaus relates its motif family to the 1911 glass picture and Improvisation 21 a. [1]; [3].
It belongs to the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München, inventory GMS 82, through the Gabriele Münter Foundation gift of 1957. The current online record says it is not on display; check that record for the latest status. [1].
Discussion
What do you notice first in Improvisation 21 a? 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 marks first suggest a boat, riders or buildings?
How does the greyish white change the motifs you can see in Mit Sonne?
How far can an apocalyptic reading be tested against this canvas alone?
Join the Conversation
Add your observation below and tell us which part of the artwork led you to it.
References
- Lenbachhaus, Improvisation 21 a, GMS 82, object record, Friedel–Hoberg essay and CC0 image notice. View source.
- Lenbachhaus, separate Mit Sonne, GMS 120. View source.
- Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Vasily Kandinsky: Around the Circle, 2021 checklist. View source.
- Creative Commons, CC0 1.0 Universal. View source.
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