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
Study for Improvisation 8 by Wassily Kandinsky: Introduction
A bright, angular band sweeps up through Wassily Kandinsky's Study for Improvisation 8. Above it, an imagined city bristles with towers, walls and dark roofs; below it, figures gather amid yellow, pink, blue and black. The work is a 1909 oil painting on card mounted on canvas, measuring 98 × 70 cm. Christie's catalogue identifies it as Studie für Improvisation 8 and connects it to Kandinsky's larger Improvisation 8 (The Sword). Its detailed provenance follows the painting to the Volkart Foundation and its sale in 2012. The buyer was recorded as a private European buyer, so a present public museum location should not be inferred. [1]; [2].
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Watch on YouTubeAt a Glance
- Artist and title:Wassily Kandinsky, Studie für Improvisation 8 (Study for Improvisation 8).
- Date:1909, as catalogued by Christie's for the oil study.
- Medium and size:Oil on card mounted on canvas, 98 × 70 cm.
- Catalogues:Kandinsky's handlist, no. 95; Roethel and Benjamin's oil painting catalogue, no. 288.
- Relationship:A preparatory oil painting for the distinct larger Improvisation 8, also called The Sword.
- Documented ownership:Volkart Foundation, Switzerland, by 1960; sold at Christie's in 2012 to a private European buyer.
- Separate drawing:Centre Pompidou owns a small graphite notebook leaf with a related title; it is not this colourful oil study.
Where this work sits in Kandinsky’s career
The Blue Rider
1903Composition VII
1913Composition VIII
1923Several Circles
1926Sky Blue
1940Contents
- An image divided by a rising shape
- A study beside the finished Improvisation
- Historical imagery and its limits
- The 1909 turning point
- Frequently asked questions
- References
An image divided by a rising shape
The first striking feature is the broad yellow structure that rises in a V across the picture. It pulls the eye from the sides toward the upper centre and almost divides the image into an elevated city and a lower gathering of people. Its edges are not mechanically straight. They bend, swell and meet patches of orange, pink, blue and green. The object might suggest a ramp, fortification or steep ground, but no single label completely accounts for its function. Christie's describes a V-shaped rise, an enclosed city and a sword that contributes to the painting's central axis. [1].
Near the top, dark and bright roofs press together under bands of yellow, red and blue. Upright forms suggest church towers and domes, while a massive wall encloses the place. They do not describe a surveyed town. Christie's reads an imagined combination of a monastery complex resembling the Kyiv Lavra and red-roofed houses associated with Murnau. The word resembling matters: the essay proposes a visual and historical association, not a documentary claim that Kandinsky painted a particular postcard or precise viewpoint. [1].
Below the yellow band, the painting becomes more explicitly populated. A dark figure at lower left seems to stand beside or hold a long upright object, identified in the catalogue as a sword. Other people, including pale figures at the lower right, gather near the foot of the walled city. The forms are bold but far from literal. Broad white, blue, purple and red patches make bodies and clothing emerge gradually from the colour. Christie's calls some of these figures pilgrims and suggests that one white-clad figure may be lamenting; those are interpretive identifications, not facts established by an inscription on the work. [1].
This tension between seeing and deciphering is central to the picture. The sword gives the scene its dramatic point, yet its relation to the huge yellow form and the city above is not straightforward. A viewer can follow verticals, domes and figures before understanding any proposed story. Kandinsky makes colour and shape do much of the work that conventional history painting would have assigned to clearly described actors and settings. That observation does not require us to declare the painting fully abstract; its remaining figures and architecture still matter. [1].
A study beside the finished Improvisation
The title says study, but the picture is a substantial oil painting, not a tiny notation. Its 98 × 70 cm surface allowed Kandinsky to work out colour, form and the placement of motifs at a significant scale. Christie's identifies the final Improvisation 8, titled Das Schwert (The Sword), as a separate painting. Its essay observes that the study draws some forms more firmly and gives a clearer vertical axis rising from the sword through the wall and central tower. The finished composition handles those relations more freely. [1].
The relationship is especially useful when asking what improvisation meant in Kandinsky's work. It did not bar revision or preparation. Christie's notes that he made several related studies as he developed the early numbered Improvisations in 1909. The series let him turn observed landscape, remembered folklore and imagined events into emotionally charged pictorial structures. A study could test the balance of a sword, a city and groups of figures without settling every line in advance. [1].
The auction catalogue cites Kandinsky's own handlist for this painting and the Roethel and Benjamin catalogue of his early oils. Such references are more than scholarly decoration: they help distinguish the colour oil study from a different drawing with nearly the same title. The Centre Pompidou owns a 1909 graphite notebook sheet, 16.6 × 10.35 cm, also called Etude pour Improvisation 8. Its inventory is AM 81-65-177. That small monochrome drawing and the large oil study share a subject and title family, but their media, dimensions and collection histories are different. [1]; [3].
Historical imagery and its limits
Christie's proposes that the painted city recalls religious architecture in Kyiv and that the people below might evoke pilgrims. The essay also reports Jelena Hahl-Koch's suggestion that two figures could be Boris and Gleb, sons of Vladimir the Great who became revered saints. That reading gives the sword-bearer and companion a possible narrative, but it is a scholarly interpretation. The painting does not supply a label identifying the figures, and another viewer can first see a more general scene of a guarded city and people outside it. [1].
The sword can be read as an emblem of defence. It points down and helps connect the figures with the hill or wall above. Christie's relates the armed person to riders, knights and Saint George figures in other Kandinsky works of the period. This does not make the study an illustration of one fixed episode. Its visual signs overlap: monastery-like domes, Murnau-like roofs, a dramatic weapon and a group of travellers belong to a setting that feels both local and legendary. The essay presents the city as a composite of Kandinsky's present surroundings and an imagined past. [1].
The colours do not quietly fill those signs. Yellow rises through the centre, pink and blue push against it, and black outlines give some forms sudden weight. These contrasts make the subject feel urgent even when its story stays elusive. The auction essay situates this handling within Kandinsky's turn toward stronger, less descriptive colour in Murnau. We can see the effect directly in the reproduced painting: bright passages lead the eye before every human form has become legible. [1].
The 1909 turning point
Christie's places the picture among Kandinsky's first numbered Improvisations. In its account, 1909 was a year in which he worked in Murnau, developed ideas that became On the Spiritual in Art, and explored ways to loosen a painting's dependence on the immediate appearance of nature. The catalogue describes his early Improvisations as an important stage on the way to non-objective painting. The stage is visible here precisely because the figures, sword and city remain present. They are transformed rather than erased. [1].
The auction record also preserves a useful caution about chronology. It says the larger final Improvisation 8 appears under 1910 in Kandinsky's handlists but is itself signed and dated 1909. The study is assigned the same year because it preceded that finished picture. Elsewhere in older literature, this oil study was once called Mountains and dated 1910. These differences reflect the history of cataloguing, not evidence for a different image on this page. Christie's exact lot record identifies the work illustrated here as the 1909 study. [1].
A final material detail is easily missed in a screen image. Christie's calls the support card mounted on canvas. The card is the surface on which Kandinsky painted; the canvas is part of its later physical presentation. Saying simply “oil on canvas” would hide that distinction. The catalogue also records that the study was removed from the back of another painting, and reports a researcher's tentative suggestion about which landscape that may have been. Since the identification is expressly uncertain, it should remain a possibility rather than become part of the work's secure provenance. [1].
The documented chain runs through a Berlin sale in 1950, subsequent owners and the Nathan dealers in Zurich, then to the Volkart Foundation in 1960. Christie's offered the painting in November 2012; its published results identify the buyer only as European private. This is the last specific ownership information in those records. A borrowed museum display or a historical loan does not establish its current location. The painting's securely documented identity rests instead on its title, date, medium, measurements and catalogue history. [1]; [2].
Kandinsky artworks directory
Frequently Asked Questions
Christie's dates this oil study to 1909. Its essay explains that the larger completed Improvisation 8 is signed and dated 1909, despite an older handlist entry under 1910. [1].
It is oil on card mounted on canvas, 98 × 70 cm. The card and the mounting canvas should both be named. [1].
No. It is a preparatory oil painting for the distinct larger Improvisation 8, titled The Sword. Christie's compares the two compositions and notes the study's firmer outlines and clearer central axis. [1].
No. Pompidou's similarly titled object, AM 81-65-177, is a small graphite notebook sheet. The colour painting discussed here is the 98 × 70 cm oil study catalogued by Christie's. [3]; [1].
That is one scholarly suggestion reported in Christie's essay. The sword-bearer, companion, pilgrims and church-like buildings can support historical or religious readings, but the painting itself does not settle every person's identity. [1].
Discussion
What do you notice first in Study for Improvisation 8? 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 rising yellow shape divide the scene?
Where can the sword, city and people be discerned?
How does this oil study differ from the Pompidou drawing?
Join the Conversation
Add your observation below and tell us which part of the artwork led you to it.
References
- Christie's, Studie für Improvisation 8, lot 47, 7 November 2012: object, provenance, literature, exhibition history and essay. View source.
- Christie's, November 2012 sale results. View source.
- Centre Pompidou, separate graphite Etude pour Improvisation 8, AM 81-65-177. View source.
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