Kandinsky's most famous works: meaning and where to see them

The most famous works of Wassily Kandinsky, the Russian painter considered one of the fathers of abstract art, are The Blue Rider (1903), Murnau with Church, Impression III (Concert), Composition VII, the study Squares with Concentric Circles (1913), On White II, Composition VIII, Yellow-Red-Blue, Several Circles, Composition X and Sky Blue. They are mainly in Paris (Centre Pompidou), Munich (Lenbachhaus), New York (Guggenheim) and Moscow.

On this page you will find them all, in chronological order, with their meaning and the museum where you can see them. We begin with Kandinsky's best-loved image, the one we have printed on Amalfi paper.

Kandinsky, the painter who "heard" colours

Wassily Kandinsky was born in Moscow in 1866 and until the age of thirty did something else entirely: he studied law and economics and taught at the university. Two experiences changed his life. At the exhibition of the Impressionists in Moscow he saw one of Monet's Haystacks and, without immediately recognising the subject, understood that a painting could move people even without depicting an object. And at the theatre, listening to Wagner's Lohengrin, he felt he could "see" the colours of the music. In 1896 he left everything and went to study painting in Munich.

For Kandinsky every colour had a sound and an emotion: yellow is shrill like a trumpet, blue deep like a cello, red warm and alive. He explained this in his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1911). In Munich he founded the Blue Rider group with Franz Marc, taught at the Bauhaus from 1922 to 1933 and spent his last years in Paris, where he died in 1944.

Squares with Concentric Circles: the most famous colour study in the world

Wassily Kandinsky, Colour Study: Squares with Concentric Circles, 1913, watercolour, gouache and crayon on paper, 23.9 x 31.5 cm (9.4 x 12.4 in). Munich, Lenbachhaus

Twelve squares, three rows of four, and in each one a series of circles one inside the other: red, yellow, blue, green, purple. It is not a finished painting but a study, a small sheet that Kandinsky painted in Munich in 1913 to experiment with how colours behave when they sit side by side. A yellow inside a blue seems to come towards us; a blue inside a yellow seems to recede; a red on a green vibrates.

It is therefore a small laboratory of his ideas: for him the circle was the most perfect and "cosmic" form, and each square is like a different note of the same chord. Precisely because it is so simple and so full of colour, it has become Kandinsky's most reproduced image, loved by those who know abstract art and by those who have never heard of it.

Squares with Concentric Circles on Amalfi paper, to hang at home

Few paintings change a wall like this one. Its full colours suit a modern home and, surprisingly, also sit well next to antique furniture, as you can see above. It is cheerful without being childish, and anyone who walks in recognises it at once.

Kandinsky painted it on paper, in watercolour and gouache: that is why a print on handmade Amalfi paper is the closest thing to the original. The cotton paper takes the colours with the same softness, 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, 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

Kandinsky's colours were painted on paper, with water: on glossy paper they become cold and flat. We chose the oldest paper in Italy.

Kandinsky's other most famous works

Here are the other masterpieces, in chronological order: you can see how, in just a few years, Kandinsky moves from landscape to complete abstraction. A key to the titles: the Impressions arise from something seen or heard in real life, the Improvisations from instinct, while the Compositions are the large paintings built up over a long time, with dozens of studies.

The Blue Rider (1903)

The Blue Rider, 1903. Zurich, Foundation E. G. Bührle Collection

A rider in a blue cloak gallops across a meadow towards an autumn wood. It is still a figurative painting, but colour already matters more than form. The rider would often return in his painting and in 1911 would give its name to the group of artists he founded with Franz Marc.

Murnau with Church (1910)

Murnau with Church, 1910. Munich, Lenbachhaus

The summers in Murnau, in Bavaria, with the painter Gabriele Münter were his laboratory. Here the church and the houses become patches of pure colour: one more step and the subject will disappear altogether. A second version of the same subject was sold at auction in London in 2023 for £37.2 million, the record for Kandinsky.

Impression III (Concert) (1911)

Impression III (Concert), 1911. Munich, Lenbachhaus

On 2 January 1911 Kandinsky heard a concert of music by Arnold Schoenberg and the next day he painted this picture: the large black shape is the grand piano, the yellow is the sound flooding the hall, the patches at the bottom are the audience. It is music transformed into colour.

Composition VII (1913)

Composition VII, 1913. Moscow, Tretyakov Gallery

The masterpiece of the Munich years: a canvas two metres by three (about 6.6 by 9.8 feet), a whirl of colours and lines without a single recognisable object. Kandinsky prepared it with more than thirty studies and painted it in a few days. For many it is the high point of his painting before the war.

On White II (1923)

On White II, 1923. Paris, Centre Pompidou

At the Bauhaus Kandinsky's painting becomes geometric: sharp lines, triangles, circles and chequerboards on a white background. The great black diagonals give the painting an almost musical tension.

Composition VIII (1923)

Composition VIII, 1923. New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Kandinsky considered it his most important post-war painting: circles, lines and triangles that meet like the instruments of an orchestra. At the top left a large black and purple circle dominates the scene.

Yellow-Red-Blue (1925)

Yellow-Red-Blue, 1925. Paris, Centre Pompidou

A manifesto painting: on the left yellow, warm and luminous, on the right blue, cold and deep, and red in the middle acting as a bridge. It is his theory of colour painted on a single canvas.

Several Circles (1926)

Several Circles, 1926. New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Transparent circles floating on a dark background like planets in space. Kandinsky wrote that the circle was the form that fascinated him most, at once the most modest and the most powerful. Thirteen years after Squares with Concentric Circles, the circle has become an entire universe.

Composition X (1939)

Composition X, 1939. Düsseldorf, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen

The last of the ten great Compositions, painted in Paris: light, coloured shapes floating on a deep black background. This is the mature Kandinsky, freer and almost fairy-tale-like.

Sky Blue (1940)

Sky Blue, 1940. Paris, Centre Pompidou

Painted in the months when the war was reaching Paris, it is one of his most serene paintings: small coloured creatures that look like insects, fish or toys swim in a blue sky. Kandinsky died four years later, in 1944.

On our blog you will also find Kandinsky and Italy, Repin, Kandinsky and Malevich: three Russian painters and an article on Paul Klee, his great friend and colleague at the Bauhaus.

Where to see Kandinsky's works

There are three richest collections. The Centre Pompidou in Paris, which received most of the works kept by his widow, Nina Kandinsky (On White II, Yellow-Red-Blue, Sky Blue). The Lenbachhaus in Munich, thanks to the donation by Gabriele Münter, with the Blue Rider years (Murnau, Impression III and the Colour Study). And the Guggenheim in New York, which grew out of Solomon Guggenheim's passion for Kandinsky (Composition VIII, Several Circles). Other masterpieces are in Moscow, St Petersburg and Düsseldorf.

If you want his colours always before your eyes, there is our print of Squares with Concentric Circles on Amalfi paper.

Where to hang it, and who to give it to

In the hallway, above a console table, where its colours welcome whoever arrives. In the living room, on a light-coloured wall, as the point of colour in the room. In the studio of an architect, a designer or a musician, because it was born between painting, geometry and music. In a child's bedroom, where the coloured circles appeal to children too. And as a gift for anyone who loves modern art, design or the Bauhaus.

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