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
Zubovsky Platz by Wassily Kandinsky: Introduction
In Zubovsky Platz, Moscow fills the view almost to the horizon. Kandinsky looks down across angled roofs, a narrow passage of street, and taller buildings beyond. It is a recognisable city, yet its colours do more than record masonry and weather. Blues and purples move across the roofs; warm yellow brings a long building forward; a dark green block rises at the left. Painted in 1916, after Kandinsky's return to Russia, the work shows an artist who had not left the visible world behind. He was using a city outside his own windows to test what colour and a raised viewpoint could do. [1].
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Watch on YouTubeAt a Glance
- Artist:Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944).
- Title:Zubovsky Platz (Zubovsky Square).
- Date:1916.
- Medium and size:oil on canvas mounted on cardboard, 41.8 × 45.8 cm.
- Collection:Lenbachhaus, Munich, G 18267.
- Subject:a view over Moscow near Kandinsky's home, one of several window views from this period.
Where this work sits in Kandinsky’s career
The Blue Rider
1903Composition VII
1913Composition VIII
1923Several Circles
1926Sky Blue
1940Contents
- Looking across the square
- Why was Kandinsky painting Moscow in 1916?
- One view among several
- A place in Kandinsky's development
- Frequently asked questions
- References
Looking across the square
The viewpoint is unusually high. The nearest buildings do not meet us at street level: their roofs, upper walls and gaps are presented as a spread of angled planes. A pale roof occupies much of the lower left, slanting towards the centre. Opposite it, blue and violet areas gather on roofs at the right. Between them a narrow street seems to run inward. This arrangement gives the painting depth, but it also lets the roofs act as large colour shapes. We can follow the route into the city or pause over the way one patch of paint meets another.
At upper left, a dark vertical building stands against the lighter distance. A row of windows and a warm yellow wall break up its weight. Farther across, a long yellow building runs diagonally toward the right edge. Those two structures steady a scene that might otherwise feel scattered. Their different directions make the eye travel: up the dark block, along the yellow façade, then down to the nearer roofs. The city is crowded, but Kandinsky has given it an underlying rhythm of strong slopes and upright masses.
The brushwork keeps the scene open. Roofs and distant buildings are recognisable without being measured into a precise architectural survey. A line may identify a roof edge, then soften into the paint around it. The distant skyline is busy and compressed, with little need to resolve every structure separately. This is not a failure to describe Moscow. It is a choice about how a city can be held together in a small painting. A map would settle each street and building. Kandinsky instead makes the experience of looking from above—seeing many things at once, under changing light—the subject.
Colour is central to that experience. The pale roofs are not neutral; they carry yellow, lavender and blue. Dark accents punctuate a surface dominated by lighter passages. The contrast helps the viewer read the city while also drawing attention to the painted surface. Kandinsky had long used colour to transform landscape, including the German scenes of his Murnau years. Here he applies that freedom to the denser forms of Moscow. The result is still a view of a place, but it does not treat accurate local colour as the painting's only purpose. [1]; [3].
Why was Kandinsky painting Moscow in 1916?
Kandinsky had been living and working in Germany when the First World War began. The war forced him to leave, and by the end of 1914 he had returned to Moscow. The Lenbachhaus describes how, in early 1915, he took a five-room flat on the upper floor of a building he had commissioned near Zubovsky Square. Its height and location gave him views across the city. The setting of Zubovsky Platz was therefore part of his daily surroundings, not a remote scene recalled from memory. [1].
His work did not simply resume the course it had taken before the war. The Lenbachhaus notes that painting in oil almost stopped during the first two years after his return, while watercolours and reverse-glass pictures became important. Some brought back figures and motifs with an unexpectedly representational character. Oil paintings appeared again in 1916, including a group of views from his Moscow windows. This account makes the city pictures part of a varied practice, rather than evidence that Kandinsky had rejected his earlier experiments with abstraction. [1].
A letter dated 21 May 1916 gives unusually direct evidence of what the window views meant to him. Writing to Gabriele Münter, Kandinsky said that he was working on landscapes from his windows under sun, at night and beneath grey skies. He found the exercise useful for enlarging his palette and studying different colour harmonies. The letter, quoted in the Lenbachhaus work text, supports a modest but important conclusion: he did not paint these views only because the square happened to be nearby. The changing conditions gave him a way to investigate how colours could be arranged. It does not tell us that this specific canvas depicts one precise hour or weather condition, so the picture should not be labelled more narrowly than the evidence permits. [1].
One view among several
The title can mislead if it sounds like the definitive Kandinsky image of Zubovsky Square. The Lenbachhaus says he painted a series of views from his flat, sometimes choosing a tighter section of the city and sometimes turning towards a wider prospect that could include the Kremlin. Zubovsky Platz belongs to the first kind: its relatively close roofs and buildings fill most of the frame. The work's structure depends on that closeness. The long yellow wall, pale foreground roofs and dark block at left are large enough to become the painting's principal shapes. [1].
A related view is held by the Kunstmuseum Den Haag. Its View of Moscow from the Window of Kandinsky's Apartment at No. 1, Zubovsky Square, dated around 1916, is an oil on cardboard measuring 39.6 × 36.6 cm. It is a separate object with its own title, size and collection number. Such works can be compared to see Kandinsky's repeated interest in the view from his home, but their facts should not be combined. The Lenbachhaus painting is oil on canvas mounted on cardboard, not the Hague painting's oil on cardboard. [2]; [1].
The existence of several window views also changes how we look at this one. A view is always a selection. Move a little to one side, look farther across the city, or wait for another kind of light and the relationships between buildings change. Kandinsky's 1916 letter confirms that he worked under several conditions. The paintings give us no reason to imagine one perfect, fixed prospect that he sought to copy. Their value lies partly in seeing him return to nearby forms and make different arrangements from them.
A place in Kandinsky's development
Kandinsky's more famous abstract works can make a Moscow cityscape seem like a detour. It is more useful to see the picture as evidence of how many ways he could work at once. Before 1914, recognisable landscapes, riders and figures had coexisted with paintings that made colour and line increasingly independent of visible subjects. The Moscow years continued that openness. This view makes buildings readable, but it also uses them as a framework for contrasts of warm and cool colour, dark and light, diagonal and vertical. [3]; [1].
The painting also invites comparison with Moscow I, another 1916 work associated with the city. They should not be confused. Zubovsky Platz keeps a sustained viewpoint over a particular cluster of buildings; Moscow I draws city forms into a different, more compressed arrangement. Placing the two side by side shows that Moscow could be both a place Kandinsky looked at and a source of forms he transformed more radically. The comparison matters more than assigning either work a simple place on a path from depiction to abstraction. [4]; [1].
The building from which Kandinsky looked had a personal history as well. The Lenbachhaus records that he sold the property in January 1917 while retaining the right to occupy its top floor, and that the revolution later brought the loss of his remaining property. Those events help explain why the view from the flat was a particular place in his life, though they should not be read back into every brushstroke of a canvas made the year before. What we can see is more direct: a small painting in which a familiar city becomes an experiment in vantage point, structure and colour. [1].
Kandinsky artworks directory
Frequently Asked Questions
It is in the Lenbachhaus in Munich, inventory number G 18267. The museum acquired it in 2003. [1].
It is oil paint on canvas that has been mounted on cardboard. The Lenbachhaus measures it at 41.8 × 45.8 cm. Calling it simply an oil on canvas would leave out the mounted support recorded by the museum. [1].
No. The Lenbachhaus describes a series of views from his Moscow flat, with different framing and conditions. The Kunstmuseum Den Haag holds another circa-1916 view from the apartment. Its separate collection record should not be mistaken for this painting. [1]; [2].
His practice in these years included representational and abstract approaches. In a May 1916 letter cited by the Lenbachhaus, he described painting views from his windows under changing conditions to enlarge his palette and study colour harmonies. The subject gave him material for those experiments. [1].
Discussion
What do you notice first in Zubovsky Platz? 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
Which roof or street line first guides your eye into the city?
How does this tighter view compare with Kandinsky’s other 1916 Moscow scenes?
What further evidence might identify the exact viewpoint more precisely?
Join the Conversation
Add your observation below and tell us which part of the artwork led you to it.
References
- Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München, Zubovsky Platz collection record, object details and work text. View source.
- Kunstmuseum Den Haag, View of Moscow from the Window of Kandinsky's Apartment at No. 1, Zubovsky Square, separate circa-1916 object record. View source.
- Lenbachhaus, Wassily Kandinsky biography. View source.
- Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Kandinsky teaching materials, context for Moscow I. View source.
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