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 7 by Wassily Kandinsky: Introduction
Colour rises through Improvisation 7 in broad, broken strokes. Green and orange press against one another, while blue outlines and a light central passage draw the eye upward. Something like a landscape or a group of figures seems to emerge, then becomes hard to hold in place. Kandinsky painted this tall canvas in 1910. The State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow records it as oil on canvas, 131 × 97 cm, inventory 10977. Its own account describes a strong upward diagonal and figures and riders only partly released from the surrounding painted masses. [1]; [2].
The gallery's reading gives a way into the work without turning it into a conventional scene. We can follow the sweep of colour before deciding whether a curved shape is a hillside, a body or simply a forceful brushstroke. The painting belongs to Kandinsky's early Improvisations, where visible forms and the momentum of colour are both active. Its title names a mode of artistic experiment, but the object is a specific, carefully organised picture with a documented exhibition and collection history. [1].
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Watch on YouTubeAt a Glance
- Artist and title:Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation 7 (Импровизация 7).
- Date:1910, according to the State Tretyakov Gallery.
- Medium and size:Oil on canvas, 131 × 97 cm.
- Collection:State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, inventory 10977.
- Visible structure:Upward diagonal movement, broad green, orange and yellow masses, a light central passage and blue contours; figures and riders are suggested within a larger landscape-like movement in the owner's interpretation.
- Recorded collection entry:Received from the Museum of Painterly Culture in 1929.
- Related object:Lenbachhaus owns a small 1910 pencil study for Improvisation 7, inventory GMS 514; it is not the oil painting.
- Image:Existing painting reproduction retained.
Where this work sits in Kandinsky’s career
The Blue Rider
1903Composition VII
1913Composition VIII
1923Several Circles
1926Sky Blue
1940Contents
- A landscape that will not stay still
- Colour, line and the early Improvisations
- From Düsseldorf through Russia
- The separate Lenbachhaus study
- Frequently asked questions
- References
A landscape that will not stay still
The format matters. At 131 cm high and 97 cm wide, the Tretyakov painting draws the eye along a vertical field. Near the bottom, large greens and darker forms weigh down the composition. Higher up, lighter yellow and orange passages appear to open it. A pale form near the centre can feel like a channel through the dense paint, yet it is crossed and bordered by other strokes. The result is an ascent made from overlapping colour rather than a clear path through a depicted place. These are observations from the painting's reproduction; the owner's record identifies the same overall upward and diagonal thrust. [1].
The eye can follow a warm curved band from the left toward the middle. Dark green and black interrupt it. On the right, orange and brown accumulate beside sharper changes of tone. Blue contours run through these colour areas, but they do not always serve as the outlines of independent objects. A line may briefly suggest an edge of a figure, then become part of a broader rhythm. This shifting relation between line and colour helps explain why the museum describes painted masses merging together. [1].
The Tretyakov Gallery still finds traces of people and riders in what it calls a monumental landscape. Its language is useful precisely because it does not demand a complete cast of characters. The forms seem to rise vertically, then compress into a diagonal movement. Looking for a horse or a person can sharpen attention to a passage of blue or dark green, but insisting that every curve has a single representational job would flatten the picture's ambiguity. The painting makes a recognisable world and an autonomous arrangement of marks coexist. [1].
Colour, line and the early Improvisations
Kandinsky's terms Impression, Improvisation and Composition marked different kinds of artistic prompting. The Tretyakov Gallery presents the Improvisations as expressions of an “inner” nature rather than direct impressions of an external scene. That framework helps explain why a landscape-like picture can resist identification as a view of a particular place. It should not be mistaken for evidence that Kandinsky painted the canvas in one sitting or without revision. The appearance of speed is a visual effect; the painting's exact studio sequence would require separate evidence. [1].
An academic study of Kandinsky's early exhibitions places Improvisation 7 among works he showed publicly in 1910, alongside Improvisation 4 and an early version of Improvisation 5. Its researchers classified Improvisation 7 as non-representational for the purposes of their study. The Tretyakov Gallery, by comparison, discerns figures, riders and a monumental landscape. These are different ways of testing how far the picture has moved from an identifiable scene. In Improvisation 7, the large colour passages do much of the expressive work that a clearly described rider or mountain might have done in an earlier painting. [4]; [1].
The Tretyakov Gallery compares the contours and rhythms with Kandinsky's Sketch for Composition II of 1909–10, now at the Guggenheim. It sees a similar sense of grand landscape and upward striving, but finds the movement here more compact. This comparison makes sense of the painting's density. The rising forms are tightly pressed together, and the blue lines do not open a spacious, stable horizon. Still, the two works remain distinct objects with different titles and collections. A comparison is a tool for seeing the Tretyakov canvas more clearly, not a claim that it is a version of the Guggenheim sketch. [1].
The gallery further suggests that this may be among Kandinsky's last works in which colour patches and lines do not stand in open antagonism. That is a curatorial judgement about the course of his art. On this canvas, one can test part of it: blue contours frequently seem embedded within broad colour masses instead of being set against them as a separate system. Yet a single painting cannot establish a hard boundary between phases of an artist's practice. The useful point is the close relation of line and colour here, not a precise claim that a new style began the next day. [1].
From Düsseldorf through Russia
The scholarly exhibition study records Improvisation 7 at the Sonderbund exhibition in Düsseldorf in 1910, with Improvisation 4 and Improvisation 5 – Variation I. It quotes the catalogue listing number 101 as Improvisation Nr. 7, Sturm (“Storm”) and identifies its size as 131 × 97 cm, matching the Tretyakov canvas. The historical subtitle suggests a turbulent effect, but it does not turn every mark into a literal cloud or bolt of lightning. Early viewers met this picture while Kandinsky's movement away from readily described scenes was still unfolding. [4].
Its later path can be traced more specifically than a general account of Kandinsky's fame. Natalia Avtonomova, writing for Tretyakov Gallery Magazine, reconstructs exhibitions in Scandinavia and Russia during 1916–17 using catalogues, letters and Kandinsky's own diary. She identifies the Improvisation 7 now in the Tretyakov Gallery among works shown in the exhibition associated with Nadezhda Dobychina's Art Bureau in Petrograd. The catalogue gave numbers rather than a full list of titles, so her identification depends on the diary and the surviving record. That qualification is part of the evidence, not a reason to erase the work's documented circulation. [3].
The sequence crossed borders during wartime, when Kandinsky had left Germany and returned to Russia. Avtonomova describes the works' movement through northern European exhibitions before the Petrograd presentation. This context shows how a painting made in 1910 remained part of an active, changing public conversation six years later. It does not mean every venue displayed exactly the same selection: the article stresses incomplete lists and additions. The Tretyakov painting was among the works Avtonomova identifies for the later Russian exhibition. [3].
The Tretyakov Gallery records that the canvas entered its collection from the Museum of Painterly Culture in 1929. That collection history is an object fact separate from its exhibition route. It also distinguishes this work from other early Improvisations that entered other Russian or European museums by different paths. The owner gives inventory 10977, making the identification more secure than a title and number alone. [1].
The separate Lenbachhaus study
The Lenbachhaus in Munich owns a work titled Study for Improvisation 7 (Entwurf zu “Improvisation 7”). Its record gives 1910, pencil on light-brown sketchbook paper, 14.8 × 10 cm, inventory GMS 514. It came to the museum with the Gabriele Münter Foundation gift in 1957. These details describe a small drawing, not the tall 131 × 97 cm oil in Moscow. [5]; [1].
The existence of a study is a useful reminder that the title Improvisation does not mean a complete absence of preparation. It gives a material point of comparison between a small drawing and a finished painting. Without a detailed, verified image comparison, however, the study cannot establish the order of every painted colour or figure in the final canvas. Pencil and oil produce very different effects. The sketch may clarify how Kandinsky explored arrangement, while the Tretyakov canvas asks to be examined on its own painted terms. [5].
Improvisation 7 is therefore more than a numbered step toward abstraction. It combines a rising, compressed composition with the unstable appearance of people, riders and landscape. Its 1910 public showing, later exhibition route and 1929 collection entry make a concrete history around those visual effects. The painting invites the eye to search for forms and then to follow the colours and lines beyond them. [1]; [3].
Kandinsky artworks directory
Frequently Asked Questions
The State Tretyakov Gallery dates the oil painting to 1910. [1].
It is in the State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, inventory 10977. A gallery programme has listed it in connection with the New Tretyakov site, but current display should be checked with the museum. [1]; [6].
The owning gallery describes an overall sense of monumental landscape with partly suggested people and riders. It also emphasises the painting's upward diagonal, contrasting brushstrokes and blue contours. These motifs should be read as suggestions within a dynamic composition, not as a fully mapped scene. [1].
A scholarly exhibition study lists it at the 1910 Düsseldorf Sonderbund, where the catalogue called it Improvisation Nr. 7, Sturm. Natalia Avtonomova also identifies the Tretyakov painting among works in the 1916–17 Petrograd exhibition reconstructed from Kandinsky's diary and other records. [4]; [3].
Discussion
What do you notice first in Improvisation 7? 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
Where does the upward diagonal first take shape among the colours?
Can you test the Tretyakov’s suggested riders against the study’s non-representational reading?
What does the 1910 catalogue subtitle Storm add without making every mark literal weather?
Join the Conversation
Add your observation below and tell us which part of the artwork led you to it.
References
- State Tretyakov Gallery, Improvisation 7, inventory 10977. View source.
- Tretyakov Gallery Magazine, English object catalogue for Improvisation no. 7. View source.
- Natalia Avtonomova, “Wassily Kandinsky in Norway,” Tretyakov Gallery Magazine. View source.
- Christina Bartosch, Exhibiting Abstraction: Strategies in the Propagation of an Avant-Garde 1908–1915. View source.
- Lenbachhaus, separate Study for Improvisation 7, GMS 514. View source.
- Tretyakov Gallery programme. View source.
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