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
Landscape with Factory Chimney by Wassily Kandinsky: Introduction
A tall red chimney cuts upward through the bright, unsettled colours of Landscape with Factory Chimney. Near it, dark angular buildings sit among sloping passages of blue, green, pink and yellow. The factory is recognisable, but its surroundings refuse to stay in orderly perspective. Wassily Kandinsky painted the canvas in 1910. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York records its German title as Landschaft mit Fabrikschornstein, its medium as oil on canvas, its dimensions as 66 × 81.9 cm, and its accession number as 41.504. [1]; [1].
The painting is a landscape with an industrial feature, yet the chimney is not presented as a technical record of a named plant. Colour areas press against one another, and the buildings seem small compared with the force of the red vertical. An Art Gallery of New South Wales exhibition label identifies Murnau as the setting and reads the picture as an expressive evocation rather than a precise topographical report. That is a useful way to approach the canvas: notice what remains identifiable, then how Kandinsky bends the view into a composition of heightened colour. [2].
Watch: Wassily Kandinsky
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Curator Megan Fontanella introduces Kandinsky and the Guggenheim collection.
Watch on YouTubeAt a Glance
- Artist and title:Wassily Kandinsky, Landscape with Factory Chimney (Landschaft mit Fabrikschornstein).
- Date:1910, according to the owning museum.
- Medium and size:Oil on canvas, 66 × 81.9 cm.
- Collection:Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, founding collection, 41.504.
- Visual structure:A red chimney rises beside clustered dark forms; bright, compressed hills and sky surround them.
- Historical setting:Murnau, in the Bavarian countryside where Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter had been working.
- Provenance landmarks:Weimar collection from 1923; removed by the Nazi government in 1937; acquired for Solomon R. Guggenheim in 1939; gifted to the foundation in 1941.
Where this work sits in Kandinsky’s career
The Blue Rider
1903Composition VII
1913Composition VIII
1923Several Circles
1926Sky Blue
1940Contents
- A chimney in a shifting landscape
- Murnau and colour
- From Weimar to New York
- Frequently asked questions
- References
A chimney in a shifting landscape
The red chimney is the clearest upward line in the painting. It stands near the right side, crossing several bands of colour before reaching the top. Around its base, deep black and blue shapes suggest a compact group of roofs and industrial buildings. The chimney does not disappear into this cluster; its straightness and vivid colour make it a point of resistance to the more curved forms around it. At the same time, it is one element among many competing forces rather than a quiet landmark at the centre of a measured view. [1]; [1].
The sky is not an empty background. Yellow and orange areas flare above a pink arch, while blue and grey marks run obliquely across the upper left. Below, green rises against pale yellow; purple and blue cut through the middle. These colours do not simply fill in pre-drawn outlines. They help create hills, openings and distances, then unsettle those same distinctions. A viewer can identify a landscape, but the painting does not settle into one calm foreground, middle ground and horizon. [1].
Near the lower left, two dark rounded forms are dotted with warmer colour. Their exact identity is less certain than the chimney's. They can anchor the foreground without being named as a particular species of plant or piece of machinery. Small pale and red shapes farther up the left slope suggest buildings, while the dark factory mass presses into the centre. Kandinsky gives enough clues to locate a built environment, but not enough to turn every mark into a named object. The painting rewards looking at how a mark works before deciding what it represents. [1].
Murnau and colour
The Guggenheim's 2021 exhibition materials set works like this among Kandinsky's Bavarian landscapes of around 1910. They note his use of strong outlines and flattened space, and compare those decisions with practices he developed in printmaking. That context helps explain why the chimney and roofs can look nearly cut out while the surrounding colours sweep across them. It does not prove that this particular canvas was copied from a print or made in a single step. It describes a visual language shared across his work of the period. [1].
Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter worked around Murnau with artists including Marianne von Werefkin and Alexej Jawlensky. The Art Gallery of New South Wales label places this painting in that landscape, but stresses that its view should not be treated as an exact record. The reduced buildings and brilliant fields of colour convey a particular way of seeing rather than a surveyor's description. The label goes further, reading the picture as an expression of an inward state and Kandinsky's growing interest in spiritual order. Those are the gallery's interpretive claims, not facts that can be proved from a chimney's shape alone. [2].
What the canvas itself establishes is the tension between a visible subject and a colour structure that pushes beyond it. The chimney is a sign of a factory, yet bright yellow, pink and blue are distributed with little concern for naturalistic lighting. A long pink sweep can guide the eye as strongly as a roofline. The picture therefore retains the world of buildings and hills while granting paint its own momentum. Its energy is not evidence that Kandinsky had already abandoned landscape; it shows what he could make landscape do in 1910. [1]; [2].
The factory chimney might invite modern viewers to turn the painting into a statement about industry. The museum records support the simpler, more secure point that a factory form appears in a landscape associated with Murnau. They do not identify the plant or tell us Kandinsky's opinion of it. He could give an industrial feature as much colouristic attention as a tree or hill. The image's force lies in how that tall red structure meets other forms, not in an invented tale about a specific business or environmental event. [1]; [2].
From Weimar to New York
The canvas's later route is unusually consequential. An institutional Art Gallery of New South Wales loan schedule records it with Herwarth Walden's Galerie Der Sturm in Berlin, then says Paul Citroen bought it from Walden around 1919. The Kunstsammlungen zu Weimar bought it from Citroen in 1923. These entries give a documented public-collection stage between Kandinsky's work and its arrival in America. They do not give a specific year for every earlier transfer, so the chronology should not be made more exact than the record. [3].
In 1937, the National Socialist government removed the painting from the German state collection under its campaign against so-called “degenerate art.” The same provenance schedule then lists Hildebrand Gurlitt, followed by a Bern dealership, Gutekunst & Klipstein. Otto Nebel bought it there in February 1939 on behalf of Solomon R. Guggenheim. The sequence matters: the work's departure from Weimar was an act of state confiscation, not an ordinary decision by a willing public museum to sell. [3].
The schedule places the painting with Solomon R. Guggenheim in 1939 and records his gift to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in November 1941. The Guggenheim's own listing calls it part of the founding collection “By gift” and assigns accession 41.504. The gift description is therefore a final collection step, not an account of how the painting left Germany. Keeping the intervening provenance visible gives a truer history of the object. [1]; [3].
The painting has been exhibited and discussed as a bridge between Kandinsky's recognisable Murnau subjects and a freer handling of colour. The Guggenheim's catalogue facts and the Art Gallery of New South Wales label support that reading, while the canvas supplies its own evidence in the red chimney, dark roofs and almost independent colour fields. Its recorded provenance adds another kind of history: a 1910 work that passed through a German museum, Nazi seizure and the international art trade before entering New York. Both histories belong to this specific canvas, 41.504. [1]; [2]; [3].
Kandinsky artworks directory
Frequently Asked Questions
The Guggenheim dates the work to 1910. Its German title is Landschaft mit Fabrikschornstein. [1].
It is oil on canvas, 66 × 81.9 cm, in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, accession 41.504. [1]; [1].
The institutional records identify the factory chimney and associate the painting with Murnau, but they do not name a particular plant or exact viewpoint. The picture should not be used as a topographical map. [2].
The Art Gallery of New South Wales interprets the flattened, brilliant colours as part of Kandinsky's expressive Murnau work, aimed beyond precise description. In the painting, the coloured areas both suggest hills and sky and compete with the identifiable buildings. [2]; [1].
Yes. The provenance schedule records acquisition by the Kunstsammlungen zu Weimar in 1923 and removal from German state ownership by the Nazi government in 1937 as so-called “degenerate art.” [3].
Otto Nebel bought it from Gutekunst & Klipstein on Solomon R. Guggenheim's behalf in February 1939. Guggenheim gave it to the foundation in November 1941. [3].
Discussion
What do you notice first in Landscape with Factory Chimney? 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
How does the red chimney hold its place among the sloping colour fields?
Where do buildings remain recognisable, and where does colour take on a life of its own?
What does the Weimar-to-New York provenance record add to your understanding of this canvas?
Join the Conversation
Add your observation below and tell us which part of the artwork led you to it.
References
- Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Landscape with Factory Chimney, 41.504 and 2021 Around the Circle checklist. View source 1 · View source 2.
- Art Gallery of New South Wales, Kandinsky large-print exhibition label, p. 23. View source.
- Art Gallery of New South Wales, protected loans and provenance schedule, p. 8. View source.
- Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 2020 Kandinsky press checklist. View source.
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