Kallmünz – Nature study on the yellow stagecoach 1903

Wassily Kandinsky made this painting of Kallmünz, a landscape with a yellow stagecoach, using thick daubs of oil paint. It’s very process oriented, you can really see the hand of the artist moving the paint around. What strikes me are the juicy, almost edible quality of the colours and the way Kandinsky builds up layers to create this sense of depth. The surface is so alive! Take a close look at the lower right corner, there's this vibrant mix of greens, yellows, and reds, these almost appear to be applied at random, yet they give such a strong feeling of growth and organic chaos. The way the paint is applied, it makes it feel like the landscape itself is breathing. Kandinsky's early landscapes remind me of Van Gogh's use of colour, but you can already see him pushing towards abstraction, using the landscape as a starting point to explore pure feeling. It's a reminder that art is not just about representing the world, but about how we experience it.