Composition VI 1913

Wassily Kandinsky made this oil on canvas painting, Composition VI, whose date we don't know, now hanging in the Hermitage Museum in Russia. It’s like a giant, colorful storm—gestural marks careening across the canvas in blues, reds, whites, and blacks. I can only imagine Kandinsky in his studio, wrestling with this huge canvas, layering paint upon paint, trying to bring some kind of order to the chaos. Those sweeping brushstrokes must have taken some serious physical effort! Look at that diagonal slash of black paint near the top – it's so decisive, so full of energy, I bet he was really in the zone when he made it. I see echoes of other painters here, too – like maybe he was thinking about some of the Impressionists and their attempts to capture fleeting moments of light, or maybe he was even looking back to earlier masters, like El Greco, and his dramatic compositions. Artists are always in conversation with each other, you know? And there are so many ways of seeing, and so many ways of painting.