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
Sketch for Composition II by Wassily Kandinsky: Introduction
In Wassily Kandinsky's Sketch for Composition II, a pale diagonal opens through crowded colour and dark outlines. Riders, architectural hints and steep shapes appear within the tumult, but the picture is organised more broadly than an illustrated story. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum identifies the work as Sketch for Composition II (Skizze für Komposition II), dated 1909–10. It is oil on canvas, 97.5 × 131.1 cm, in the museum's founding collection as 45.961. This is a substantial painted study for a later finished canvas, not a small pencil note or the final Composition II itself. [1].
The Guggenheim reads a strong opposition across the picture: catastrophe on the left and a vision of salvation on the right. It identifies a horse and rider near the centre and connects that recurring motif with Kandinsky's hopes for artistic and spiritual change. The museum also states that the completed Composition II was destroyed during the Second World War. The surviving study therefore matters both as a work in its own right and as evidence for a major lost painting. [1].
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 owner title:Wassily Kandinsky, Sketch for Composition II (Skizze für Komposition II).
- Date:1909–10, according to the Guggenheim.
- Medium and size:Oil on canvas, 97.5 × 131.1 cm (38⅜ × 51⅝ inches).
- Collection:Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, founding collection 45.961.
- Relationship:A preparatory oil study for the lost final Composition II.
- Museum reading:Left-hand cataclysm, right-hand salvation, and a central horse-and-rider motif.
- Different object:Lenbachhaus GMS 353 is a separate, square watercolour and pencil on card, not this wide oil canvas.
Where this work sits in Kandinsky’s career
The Blue Rider
1903Sketch for Composition II
1909–10Composition VII
1913Composition VIII
1923Several Circles
1926Sky Blue
1940Contents
- A field divided and joined
- Why a painted study matters
- An era of upheaval
- Distinguishing the other study
- Frequently asked questions
- References
A field divided and joined
The image can first seem overwhelming. Strong red, yellow, green and blue passages press into one another. A broad pale diagonal rises through the left and centre, while dark lines loop and cut across the colour. At the edges, smaller marks may suggest figures, buildings or landscape fragments. The eye moves among them, but no one figure controls the painting as a conventional protagonist. The horizontal canvas makes room for several clusters that can be read in relation to one another. [1].
The Guggenheim's interpretation gives the left and right sides different emotional roles. It sees apocalyptic or cataclysmic forces on the left and a promise of rescue on the right. This is a museum reading of the composition, not a literal map in which every brushmark has a securely named biblical identity. The visual tension is present even before those subjects are named: colours and contours crowd together, while the lighter diagonal makes a passage through them. [1].
Near the centre, the horse-and-rider motif survives as a recognisable hint amid the painting's fragmented forms. Kandinsky used the rider repeatedly in these years. In the Guggenheim's account, it stood for a challenge to conventional artistic values and a hope for spiritual upheaval. That interpretation connects this study to Blue Mountain, where the motif is more legible, and to the imagery Kandinsky and Franz Marc would use for Der Blaue Reiter. A rider in this picture is therefore more than an anecdotal detail, though its exact contours can be difficult to isolate in a small reproduction. [1].
Colour performs work that a narrative description cannot replace. A clear patch can open a crowded area; a dark line can turn a bright passage into a boundary or suggest movement beyond it. Kandinsky did not simply add expressive colour to a finished drawing of disaster and salvation. The distribution of colour, shape and line helps make the opposition felt. A viewer can follow the motifs, then step back to see how the painting balances dense and open areas across its width. [1].
Why a painted study matters
The word “sketch” can suggest a quick, disposable first thought. This work is a large oil on canvas, almost a metre high and more than 1.3 metres wide. Its materials and scale make it an ambitious object. The title explains its role in Kandinsky's development of Composition II, but it should not flatten its own colour decisions, spatial rhythm or visible imagery into mere preparation. It is one of the surviving sources through which the artist's process can be studied. [1].
The Museum of Modern Art describes the 1909–10 final study for Composition II as a work in which grouping and equilibrium become more important than the individuality of particular motifs. That observation helps explain why this painting can contain riders or landscape hints yet remain difficult to summarise as a scene. The forms participate in a larger organisation. MoMA's exhibition account treats Kandinsky's numbered Compositions as especially important to him, and this study offers a view of the choices behind one of them. [2].
The completed Composition II no longer survives. The Guggenheim states that it was destroyed during the Second World War. A preparatory canvas cannot fully stand in for a later finished painting: dimensions, colours and details may have changed. It can, however, show the earlier arrangement of opposing zones and the artist's handling of rider imagery. The loss makes precise object language essential. What is visible here is the Guggenheim study 45.961, not a reproduction of the missing final canvas. [1]; [2].
An era of upheaval
The Guggenheim places this painting at a moment when Kandinsky's style became more expressionistic and his imagery shifted away from natural scenes toward apocalyptic subjects. Its exhibition text relates that turn to mounting social and political tensions before the First World War, and more broadly to Kandinsky's sense of conflict between matter and spirit. These are the museum's historical interpretations; the canvas does not depict a specific documented battle or date. [1].
Those meanings help explain the apparent contradiction between recognisable and dissolving forms. Kandinsky was using riders, walled shapes and landscape suggestions, yet the painting's force depends increasingly on the interaction of colour and line. The subject is neither a straightforward place nor pure geometry. It is an imaginative conflict that a viewer encounters through both fragments of things and the energy of the composition. [1]; [2].
The museum links the recurring rider to Der Blaue Reiter, the transnational group Kandinsky and Franz Marc convened in 1911, after this study was begun. Its account notes related horse-and-rider imagery in Kandinsky's theoretical and editorial work. That later history gives the central motif a wider context without making this 1909–10 oil a picture commissioned for the group. The study predates the group's formation. [1].
Distinguishing the other study
Another work titled Entwurf zu “Komposition II” belongs to the Lenbachhaus in Munich. Its detailed collection record dates it about 1910 and identifies watercolour and pencil on card, measuring 32.9 × 32.9 cm, inventory GMS 353. That square work is different in support, scale and proportions from the Guggenheim's wide oil. The Lenbachhaus page heading gives an inconsistent 1905 date, while its detailed fields and citation say about 1910; the date inconsistency should not be imported into the Guggenheim object. [3]; [1].
Kandinsky could make more than one study for a composition, and translated titles such as “study,” “sketch” and “design” can blur them in search results. The safest way to identify this page's painting is the combination of Guggenheim accession 45.961, oil on canvas, 97.5 × 131.1 cm, and the image's broad horizontal format. The Lenbachhaus and Guggenheim records should therefore be read as accounts of two different studies. [1]; [3].
The painting rewards looking at two scales. Close up, it offers possible riders, figures and a landscape transformed by strong colours. From farther away, its pale diagonal and crowded zones make the opposing forces of the museum's reading more apparent. Its role as a preparatory work, and the loss of the completed Composition II, make this survivor especially valuable. The Guggenheim's precise object record keeps that value attached to the right painting. [1].
Kandinsky artworks directory
Frequently Asked Questions
The Guggenheim dates its oil study to 1909–10. It is accession 45.961. [1].
No. This is a preparatory oil painting. The Guggenheim says the completed Composition II was destroyed during the Second World War. [1].
It is oil on canvas, measuring 97.5 × 131.1 cm. The sizeable painted study is distinct from small drawings and watercolours on paper. [1].
The Guggenheim identifies a central horse-and-rider motif and interprets it as part of Kandinsky's hope for artistic and spiritual change. Similar riders recur in his work, including Blue Mountain. [1].
No. Lenbachhaus GMS 353 is a separate 32.9 × 32.9 cm watercolour and pencil work on card. This page shows the wider Guggenheim oil 45.961. [3]; [1].
It belongs to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, as part of its founding collection. Check the museum for current display information. [1].
Discussion
What do you notice first in Sketch for Composition II? 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 can you trace a rider amid the coloured forms?
How does the pale diagonal change the balance of the crowded canvas?
What can the surviving study tell us about a final painting that no longer exists?
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 checklist and object-specific text. View source.
- Museum of Modern Art, Kandinsky: Compositions exhibition overview. View source.
- Lenbachhaus, separate Entwurf zu “Komposition II”, GMS 353. View source.
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