Kandinsky's Yellow-Red-Blue: meaning, analysis and history

Yellow-Red-Blue (in German Gelb-Rot-Blau) is an oil on canvas by Wassily Kandinsky, painted in Weimar between March and May 1925, when he was teaching at the Bauhaus. It measures 128 x 201.5 cm (50.4 x 79.3 in) and belongs to the Centre Pompidou in Paris, which received it as a gift from the painter's widow, Nina Kandinsky, in 1976.

It is the painting in which Kandinsky stages the three primary colours and his ideas about colour: yellow on the left, blue on the right, red in the middle.

When and why Kandinsky painted Yellow-Red-Blue

Wassily Kandinsky, Yellow-Red-Blue, 1925, oil on canvas, 128 x 201.5 cm (50.4 x 79.3 in). Paris, Centre Pompidou

In 1922 Kandinsky, back in Germany after the years of the Russian Revolution, was called by Walter Gropius to teach at the Bauhaus in Weimar, the school that set out to unite art, craft and architecture. There he met up again with Paul Klee, a friend from his Munich days, and taught the course on the elements of form and the wall-painting workshop.

His painting changed. The free, stormy patches of colour of the Blue Rider years gave way to circles, triangles, sharp lines and chequerboards. He did not give up emotion: he wanted to understand, as a musician studies harmony, why a colour or a form moves us.

Yellow-Red-Blue was born at a precise moment. According to the Centre Pompidou's catalogue entry it was painted in Weimar between March and May 1925, just as the Bauhaus, put in difficulty by the new regional government, was closing its Weimar site and moving to Dessau. In those same months Kandinsky was putting his theory down in writing; it would come out in 1926 in the book Point and Line to Plane. The museum describes the painting precisely as a visual translation of that theory.

What you see: left, centre and right

The Centre Pompidou sums it up like this: on the left geometric lines and light colours, on the right sinuous shapes and darker tones, and the three primary colours lined up from left to right to organise the whole composition.

On the left: the realm of yellow

The left side: the large yellow rectangle with its ochre halo, the red wedge at the top and the grey disc ringed with yellow

In the middle of the left half there is a vertical yellow rectangle, wrapped in an ochre halo and topped by a small light blue rectangle with a pale circle. Around it everything is light and angular: a red wedge, a grey disc with a yellow ring that looks like a sun, a black circle edged with red, bundles of straight lines. It is the brightest and "sharpest" part of the painting.

In the centre: red and the chequerboards

The centre: transparent red, pink and purple planes, the small chequerboards and the long black diagonal

Towards the centre the colours become denser. Red, pink and purple planes, semi-transparent like sheets of coloured glass, overlap one another. Among them appear three small chequerboards of coloured squares, a motif Kandinsky often used in the Bauhaus years, and a long black diagonal bar crosses the scene like a stroke of the bow on the strings.

On the right: the large blue circle

The right side: the deep blue circle, wrapped by the large black line that dissolves into a wave

The right half is dominated by a large blue circle, dark and deep as water at night. A thick black line embraces it from above like a hook and then winds its way down to the bottom. Here the shapes are curved, soft, almost organic; at the bottom a small black disc and a few crossed strokes close the composition, while purple clouds frame the edges of the canvas.

The meaning of Yellow-Red-Blue: the three colours according to Kandinsky

The title is not a description but a programme. As early as 1911, in the book Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Kandinsky had written that every colour has its own character and its own movement, and that it acts on the soul like a sound:

• Yellow is the typically "earthly" colour: warm and shrill, it seems to come out of the canvas towards us. Kandinsky compared it to the high sound of a trumpet.
• Blue is the typically "heavenly" colour: cold and deep, it seems to move away from us and draw us inwards. The darker it is, the more it reminded him of the cello and the organ.
• Red is lively and warm, but it stays firmly within itself: it neither advances like yellow nor withdraws like blue. That is why it can stand in the middle.

Looked at with these ideas, the painting becomes clear. On the left yellow pushes towards us, with light, pointed shapes; on the right blue draws us into the depths, with round, dark shapes; in the centre red and the coloured planes hold the two forces together. It is not a story but a balance of opposites: warm and cold, angles and curves, light and depth.

Yellow triangle, red square, blue circle: the Bauhaus questionnaire

Kandinsky was convinced that forms too had a character and that each one "called for" a colour. In 1923, with the students of the wall-painting workshop at the Weimar Bauhaus, he handed out a short questionnaire: three empty figures, a triangle, a square and a circle, to be filled in with yellow, red and blue, explaining why if possible.

The answer Kandinsky expected, which became famous, was: yellow triangle, red square, blue circle. The triangle sharp like yellow, the square stable like red, the circle deep and complete like blue. It was not a scientific experiment in the modern sense but a survey among students, and scholars still debate how far the answers really agreed. It remains, however, the key to reading many paintings of those years.

In Yellow-Red-Blue this correspondence is easy to see: on the left, next to the yellow, angles, wedges and straight lines dominate; on the right the blue takes the very shape of a large circle.

Is there a hidden face in Yellow-Red-Blue?

Many people, after looking at the painting for a long time, recognise a face in profile in it. Some read it in the left part, where the yellow rectangle and the lines around it would draw a stylised head, and some see it in the large purple and red shapes in the centre, which recall a nose and a chin turned to the left.

It is best to be clear: Kandinsky never spoke of it, and neither the Centre Pompidou nor the main studies point to a face in the painting. These are viewers' readings. Our eyes, after all, look for figures even in the clouds.

Yellow-Red-Blue and Kandinsky's other works at the Bauhaus

The painting belongs to a family. In 1923 Kandinsky had painted Composition VIII, now at the Guggenheim in New York, all circles, triangles and lines on a light background, and On White II, also at the Centre Pompidou, with its great black diagonals. The year after Yellow-Red-Blue came Several Circles (1926), where the circle becomes the absolute protagonist.

Compared with those canvases, Yellow-Red-Blue is warmer and softer: the backgrounds are not flat but shaded, almost like watercolour, and the contrast between two "poles" is declared in the title itself.

Yellow-Red-Blue on Amalfi paper, to hang at home

On a dark wall, like the green of this living room, Kandinsky's three colours light up. Next to a leather sofa and classic furniture, Yellow-Red-Blue brings a modern touch without clashing: it is a painting full of energy yet balanced, one you are happy to look at every day.

We have printed it on handmade Amalfi paper: the cotton paper renders well the shaded backgrounds and soft colours of the original, and around the image remains the margin with the deckled edges of the handmade process. The sheet measures 42 x 29 cm (16.5 x 11.4 in), in landscape format like the painting, and is mounted in a handmade beech frame: 44 x 31 cm (17.3 x 12.2 in) in all. Each print comes with a certificate of authenticity, also on Amalfi paper, signed by the craftsman who printed it.

Why it is not a poster

The backgrounds of Yellow-Red-Blue are shaded and veiled, almost like a watercolour: on glossy paper they become cold and flat. We chose the oldest paper in Italy.

Where is Yellow-Red-Blue?

The original belongs to the Centre Pompidou in Paris (Musée national d'art moderne), inventory number AM 1976-856. It arrived there in 1976 thanks to Nina Kandinsky, the painter's widow, who had looked after many of his works for decades and donated them to the French museum. That is why Paris owns one of the largest Kandinsky collections in the world.

It is one of the museum's most requested paintings and is often lent to exhibitions in Italy and abroad; in addition, the Centre Pompidou building is closed for a long renovation. Before setting off to see it, it is therefore worth checking on the museum's website where it is on display. And if you want it always before your eyes, there is our print of Yellow-Red-Blue on Amalfi paper.

On our blog you will also find Kandinsky's most famous works, from The Blue Rider to Sky Blue, and an article on Paul Klee, the friend and colleague with whom Kandinsky shared the Bauhaus years.

Where to hang it, and who to give it to

In the living room, above the sofa, where its colours become the centre of the room; it looks good on a white wall and on a bold colour such as green or petrol blue. In the studio of an architect, a designer or a graphic designer, because it is a small Bauhaus manifesto. In the music room, next to the piano or the stereo, for those who know that Kandinsky painted with sounds in mind. And as a gift for anyone who loves abstract art, design or simply full colours.

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