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
Small Pleasures by Wassily Kandinsky: Introduction
Wassily Kandinsky's Small Pleasures is a crowded painting with a deceptively modest name. A steep central form rises through hot orange and pale colour; a blue walled area, a tiny rider-like figure, dark curves and red accents crowd around it. The eye can follow passages that suggest a landscape, but no single view holds still. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum identifies the picture as Small Pleasures (Kleine Freuden), painted in June 1913 in oil on canvas. It measures 110.5 × 120 cm and belongs to the Guggenheim's founding collection as 43.921. [1]; [3].
An important clue to the painting lies in an earlier, smaller reverse-glass version. In a 1982 lecture preserved by the Guggenheim Museum Archives, art historian Rose Carol Washton Long compares the two. She sees a boat, a fortified city, a couple and horses more plainly in the glass picture, while their outlines become harder to isolate in the large oil. Her reading places struggle and destruction alongside hope and upward movement. It offers a way into the canvas, provided the two works are kept distinct and the symbolic interpretation is identified as hers. [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, Small Pleasures (Kleine Freuden).
- Date:June 1913 in the Guggenheim's exhibition checklist.
- Medium and size:Oil on canvas, 110.5 × 120 cm (43½ × 47¼ inches).
- Collection:Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, founding collection 43.921.
- Visible elements:A central rising mass, blue walled area, small rider-like form, curved dark lines and sharply contrasting colour zones.
- Related work:An earlier, smaller reverse-glass Small Pleasures is a separate object, useful for comparison but not the medium of this painting.
- Interpretation:Rose Carol Washton Long reads an opposition between struggle and a hopeful ascent; the museum's object facts do not make every mark a fixed symbol.
Where this work sits in Kandinsky’s career
The Blue Rider
1903Composition VII
1913Small Pleasures
1913Composition VIII
1923Several Circles
1926Sky Blue
1940Contents
- Looking through the crowded composition
- The glass picture and the finished oil
- Pleasure, conflict and upward movement
- Kandinsky in 1913
- Frequently asked questions
- References
Looking through the crowded composition
The nearly square canvas has no empty stage on which separate figures stand. A strong form rises through the centre, its orange and pale areas pressed against blue, grey and red. Below and beside it, lines curl and break into smaller shapes. The painting's warm zones are vivid, but darkness intrudes at the right and near the top. Kandinsky lets shapes overlap so that an apparent boundary may belong to more than one form. The viewer has to move back and forth between a possible scene and the relationships of colour and line. [3].
Near the upper middle, blue and pale outlines can suggest walls or buildings. On one side, darker passages form a broad arc that weighs down the top of the painting. At the left, warm washes and narrow marks keep the area open and restless. A small figure-like form can be sought among the upper details, yet it is easy to lose once attention shifts to the whole. Such instability is a visible quality of the image. Calling one shape a wall or rider helps describe a possible reading, but it does not require every colour patch to become an item in a complete illustrated story. [3]; [2].
The scale matters. At more than a metre across, the finished canvas can surround a viewer's field of attention in a way its small web reproduction cannot. Kandinsky used oil on canvas here, with broad areas and emphatic dark lines. The recorded size also helps distinguish it from the small glass painting discussed in the archive lecture. An illustration on a screen may make the two seem comparable as thumbnails; materially they are very different objects. [1]; [2].
The glass picture and the finished oil
Washton Long's lecture provides a rare object-specific route into Small Pleasures. She describes an earlier reverse-glass version in which a boat, walled city, couple and ascending horses can be seen more clearly. She then asks her audience to compare the large oil, where those motifs are partly veiled by denser painterly relationships. This is a comparison between two works, not evidence that the oil itself is painted under glass. The Guggenheim lists 43.921 specifically as oil on canvas. [2]; [1].
In the historian's reading, the boat and the dark right-hand areas connect with struggle. The city sits amid that unrest. The couple, horses and sunward ascent are associated with hope or an imagined better state. She suggests that the title Small Pleasures may be ironic because the painting gathers far larger concerns than a simple charming incident. Those claims belong to her interpretation; the owner's checklist gives title, date and material, but does not certify a precise symbolic key for each stroke. [2].
The comparison makes the oil's visual difficulty productive. If the glass work shows motifs more clearly, the later canvas asks colour, rhythm and collision to carry more of the experience. A viewer might glimpse a boat or horse, then return to the orange and blue passages that make the whole painting seem to rise and pull apart. Kandinsky did not have to remove every recognisable trace to make the painting less dependent on literal depiction. Instead, he altered the balance between what can be named and what must be felt through the design. [2].
Pleasure, conflict and upward movement
The title is worth holding against the picture rather than accepting it as a plain description. The painting contains brilliant reds, yellows and oranges, and its sweeping lines can feel exuberant. Yet dark areas and compressed forms give it urgency. In Washton Long's account, these opposed sensations are part of the work's structure: destruction and struggle share the same canvas with a vision of escape or renewal. Her interpretation gives the apparent contradiction a historical argument, while leaving room for other viewers to feel the colour before recognising any motif. [2].
She also relates this combination of opposed themes to Kandinsky's experiments in other arts, particularly stage composition. A stage work can bring contrasting actions or moods together without reducing them to one still scene. The picture similarly presents different zones and movements at once. This is the lecturer's comparison, not a claim that Small Pleasures illustrates a specific performance. It helps explain why a single literal description misses the painting's shifting directions. [2].
The upward forms are especially striking. An apparent ascent through the middle can connect the darker lower passages with brighter upper ones, but the way is neither straight nor clear. Curves, small figures and colour patches interrupt it. The visual energy comes from that resistance. The painting could have been made more legible by separating its parts; Kandinsky chose a surface in which forms repeatedly meet and transform one another. This remains an observation about the picture, rather than a claim about a documented sequence of brushstrokes. [3].
Kandinsky in 1913
The Guggenheim's historical account places Kandinsky's 1913 work near the end of a fertile Munich period. With Franz Marc, he had formed Der Blaue Reiter in 1911, a loose network attentive to colour, form and spiritual resonance. The museum notes that motifs such as riders, hills, towers and trees grew less dominant as Kandinsky gave line and colour increasing freedom. Small Pleasures fits that transition: traces of a world remain possible, while the painting's force depends on how its colours and shapes move together. [1].
Calling the 1913 oil “abstract” need not mean that it contains no reference at all. The earlier glass picture, as described in the archive lecture, shows how motifs could be recast rather than simply discarded. The later canvas reduces their independence: lines that might enclose a building can become moving marks, and colour can assert itself before a subject is recognised. This helps explain why different viewers may report different things they see in the same area. The uncertainty is part of the work's visual operation. [1]; [2].
The museum's accession 43.921 anchors the object across such readings. It identifies the large, finished June 1913 oil in New York. It is separate from the glass study and from other Kandinsky works with related riders, walled forms or sun motifs. The museum’s inventory number makes it possible to find the same object even when its German and English titles appear in different sources. Its dimensions and medium offer a firmer point of comparison with the related glass picture than a title alone. [1]; [3].
Small Pleasures can be approached first as a physical pattern of orange, blue, red and dark curves, then as a work that gathers hints of boats, walls and ascent. The owner's records establish its identity and materials; Washton Long's comparison gives a clearly attributed interpretation of its conflict and hope. Together they reveal why its title can sound both bright and uneasy. [1]; [2].
Kandinsky artworks directory
Frequently Asked Questions
The Guggenheim dates the finished oil to June 1913. It belongs to the museum's founding collection as 43.921. [1].
The painting on this page is oil on canvas. An earlier, smaller reverse-glass work with the same title is a separate object discussed in a Guggenheim archive lecture. [1]; [2].
Its bright central rise, blue walled-looking area, dark curves and small figure-like details suggest parts of a scene, while many boundaries remain uncertain. Historian Rose Carol Washton Long compares those veiled motifs with clearer boat, city, couple and horses in the earlier glass picture. [3]; [2].
Washton Long argues that the large oil holds struggle together with a vision of hope, giving Small Pleasures a scale of feeling larger than its title might suggest. This is her interpretation rather than a fixed museum object label. [2].
The Guggenheim gives its dimensions as 110.5 × 120 cm (43½ × 47¼ inches). It is an oil canvas, substantially larger than the related glass work. [1]; [2].
It belongs to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. A work's gallery display can change; check the museum's current information before visiting. [3].
Discussion
What do you notice first in Small Pleasures? 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 oil still suggest walls, a rider or a boat?
How do warm and dark zones affect the apparent mood of the title?
What changes when you compare the painting with the separate glass work?
Join the Conversation
Add your observation below and tell us which part of the artwork led you to it.
References
- Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Vasily Kandinsky: Around the Circle exhibition checklist and historical text. View source.
- Guggenheim Museum Archives, Rose Carol Washton Long, Abstraction: Kandinsky's Vision of Utopia, 1982 lecture transcript. View source.
- Guggenheim Bilbao, Kandinsky press image listing and owner-group object data. View source.
%20Wassily%20Kandinsky.jpg)
