Winter Landscape 1909

Wassily Kandinsky made this oil painting, Winter Landscape, and it's now here in the Hermitage Museum. The colours are wild! Look at that snow, not white, but a kind of psychedelic shimmer. It's all built up from these separate dabs of colour, the kind of marks you get from loading up a brush and planting it on the canvas. For Kandinsky, it's all about the process. He's not trying to fool you into thinking this is a real place, it's more like he's inventing a new way of seeing. I love the way he's put down the paint, so thick in places, like frosting, and then dragged it, so it smears and blends. It's like he's wrestling with the stuff. Check out the yellow house, how it glows against the blue behind, like a beacon in the landscape. This feels like a sister to the landscapes of the Fauvist painter Derain, but Kandinsky is pushing it further toward pure feeling and emotion. It’s all about colour, rhythm and the joy of painting, folks!