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
Red Oval by Wassily Kandinsky: Introduction
A small, intense red shape holds the centre of Wassily Kandinsky's Red Oval. Around it, angled planes, sweeping curves and a patterned arc seem to turn in different directions. The canvas is nearly square, yet its broad yellow interior shape tilts away from the outer edges. These competing orientations make the picture feel active without supplying a scene to describe. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum identifies the work as Red Oval (Krasny oval; Rotes Oval), an oil painting on canvas from 1920, measuring 71.6 × 71.2 cm. Its accession number is 51.1311. [1]; [2].
That date places the painting in Kandinsky's Moscow period. He had returned to Russia during the First World War and would not begin teaching at the Bauhaus in Germany until 1922. Geometry is already central here, but the image does not read like a diagram assembled from neutral units. Colour edges fray, shapes overlap, and thin marks interrupt large planes. The Guggenheim's account of this period describes Kandinsky learning from Russian avant-garde experiments with geometric form while maintaining his own interest in expressive and spiritual effects. Red Oval lets those aims meet on a single surface. [2].
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 title:Wassily Kandinsky, Red Oval; the Guggenheim also records Krasny oval and Rotes Oval.
- Date:1920, in the Guggenheim's object record and exhibition checklist.
- Medium and size:Oil on canvas, 71.6 × 71.2 cm (28 3/16 × 28 1/16 inches).
- Collection:Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 51.1311.
- Period:Painted during Kandinsky's years in Moscow, before his Bauhaus appointment.
- Visible structure:A red central oval, green and violet forms, a tilted yellow plane, dark arcs and a pale patterned segment against a blue-green field.
- Reading limit:The forms can suggest movement and depth, but the museum does not identify a depicted person, place or event.
Where this work sits in Kandinsky’s career
The Blue Rider
1903Composition VII
1913Red Oval
1920Composition VIII
1923Several Circles
1926Sky Blue
1940Contents
- What happens around the red oval?
- A Moscow painting, before the Bauhaus
- Form without a fixed story
- Frequently asked questions
- References
What happens around the red oval?
The title sends the eye first to the concentrated red near the middle. In the reproduction, it appears as an oval or compressed circle set against green. That pairing makes the red seem unusually warm and solid. Yet it is not isolated on an empty ground. An irregular green enclosure grips one side, while a dark form and a pale curved passage push into the surrounding space. The oval becomes a point from which to explore other relationships rather than an emblem with a fixed meaning. [1].
A large yellow quadrilateral beneath the central cluster is rotated relative to the canvas. It creates a field inside the field: the outer blue-green area reads as a surrounding space, while yellow appears to support or project the coloured forms. At the top, the yellow resolves into sharp triangular extensions. Along the lower edge, it is partly hidden by darker and violet shapes. Kandinsky does not let the tilted plane remain a simple flat rectangle; other marks repeatedly cross its borders. This is a description of the visible design, not a claim about the order in which the artist painted it. [1].
On the right, a curved, patterned band reaches towards the edge. Its small repeated marks differ from the broad planes around it. A long dark line bows across the foreground, while a red curve rises near the top. Some contours seem to make the forms spin; others stop the eye or send it back towards the centre. The result is an image with several tempos. It can be read quickly as a burst of colour and slowly as a careful distribution of edges, gaps and crossings. [1].
The surrounding blue-green is important too. It is mottled rather than a uniformly painted blank. Darker areas at the left and bottom give the central mass a different pressure than a white background would. The near-square format makes the tilted yellow plane and asymmetric cluster more conspicuous: the painting's support offers stability, while the forms within it evade that stability. The composition is abstract, but its materials and visual decisions are concrete. [1].
A Moscow painting, before the Bauhaus
Kandinsky's career is often told through his Munich and Bauhaus years, so the date 1920 matters. The First World War forced him to leave Germany in 1914, and he spent much of the following period in Moscow. The Guggenheim's historical account says he initially concentrated on works on paper, then faced the upheaval of the 1917 Revolution and the loss of financial security. He worked in cultural and political institutions while observing the innovations of other Russian artists. Red Oval belongs within that unsettled setting, not to a calm preparatory stage for a known Bauhaus exercise. [2].
The same museum text names El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich, Liubov Popova, Alexander Rodchenko, Varvara Stepanova and Vladimir Tatlin among the avant-garde figures Kandinsky encountered or followed in Russia. It describes him as adopting a more geometric vocabulary while continuing to value intuition and spiritual expression. That account offers a framework for the angular yellow plane, the rounded red shape and the overlapping parts of Red Oval. It does not prove that any single form was copied from a particular artist. [2].
In a separate Guggenheim archive lecture from 1984, art historian John E. Bowlt explicitly placed Red Oval beside a 1920 still life by David Shterenberg. His comparison asks viewers to notice parallels in the works' handling of form during this Russian period. It is a historian's proposed visual relationship, not documentary proof that Kandinsky studied that particular canvas or borrowed a motif from it. The value of the comparison is to prevent us from treating Kandinsky's changing geometry as if it developed in isolation. [3].
Kandinsky returned to Germany and took up Bauhaus teaching in 1922, according to the Guggenheim's account. Red Oval therefore precedes the period in which circles, triangles and straight lines became especially prominent in his teaching and mature Bauhaus pictures. Looking backwards from those later works can make the 1920 canvas appear like a finished geometric formula. Looking at it on its own terms reveals softer passages, uneven contours and layered movement alongside its more legible shapes. [2].
Form without a fixed story
The name Red Oval identifies a colour and shape, not a subject. There are suggestive forms in the painting, but the Guggenheim's record does not label them as buildings, boats, musical instruments or people. A viewer may find associations in a curved band or a pointed form; such associations can help attention, provided they remain possibilities rather than claimed facts. What can be described securely is how broad colour areas, broken contours and thin black strokes affect one another. [1].
This distinction matters because Kandinsky did not make an impersonal chart simply by using geometry. The Guggenheim's interpretation of his Russian-period work says that even increasingly flat or geometric forms retained an expressive aim. In Red Oval, the red centre is more forceful because green surrounds it; the yellow plane feels unstable because it is tipped; the blue-green outer field becomes spacious because the central marks are packed closely together. These are observable visual effects. Their emotional meanings can remain open. [2].
The oil medium also matters. This is a canvas painting, not one of Kandinsky's many watercolours or a printed design. Its catalogue dimensions are just over seventy centimetres in both directions, large enough to give the central cluster bodily presence but far smaller than some of his later monumental compositions. The photograph flattens surface texture and scale. The owner's measurements and medium help restore a sense of the physical work behind the screen image. [2].
The painting belongs to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and is identified there as 51.1311. That number is useful because Kandinsky made multiple works with ovals and circles, and translated titles can vary. It also prevents confusion with his 1917 Study for “Gray Oval” or later oval paintings. A title resemblance is no substitute for matching the owner image, date, dimensions and medium. Current display may change, so the museum's collection record is the appropriate place to check before planning a visit. [1]; [2].
Red Oval is a useful turning point because it resists a neat before-and-after story. It uses assertive geometries associated with Kandinsky's later work while retaining a crowded, painterly interplay of colour and line. Its 1920 Moscow date places that experiment amid direct contact with Russian modernism, before his Bauhaus classroom. The title gives the viewer a starting shape; the rest of the picture keeps the act of looking in motion. [1]; [2].
Kandinsky artworks directory
Frequently Asked Questions
The Guggenheim dates Red Oval to 1920, during Kandinsky's Moscow years. His Bauhaus teaching began in 1922. [1]; [2].
It is oil on canvas, measuring 71.6 × 71.2 cm. The Guggenheim lists the work under accession 51.1311. [2].
It belongs to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Check the museum for its current display status, which can change. [1].
It was painted before Kandinsky joined the Bauhaus. Its geometric forms can be compared with his later work, but the museum dates this canvas to 1920 and his Bauhaus appointment to 1922. [2].
The title names the central red shape. The Guggenheim record does not give it a specific narrative identity. Its effect comes partly from its placement amid green, yellow, violet and dark curving marks. [1].
Discussion
What do you notice first in Red Oval? 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 tilted yellow plane change the painting’s balance?
Which marks pull your eye toward or away from the central red oval?
What changes when you place this 1920 canvas in Kandinsky’s Moscow years?
Join the Conversation
Add your observation below and tell us which part of the artwork led you to it.
References
- Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Red Oval, collection object 1891. View source.
- Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Vasily Kandinsky: Around the Circle press kit, checklist and exhibition text. View source.
- Guggenheim Museum Archives, John E. Bowlt, “Wassily Kandinsky and the Russian Avant-Garde,” 1984 lecture transcript. View source.
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