Munich – English Garden 1901

Wassily Kandinsky made this painting of Munich’s English Garden with oil on canvas, and you can feel the juicy, tactile quality of the paint. Kandinsky's surface is alive with marks – short dabs and strokes of color laid on with a brush loaded with paint. The way he builds up these layers creates a surface that shimmers and vibrates, like the reflections on the water he depicts. I love the way he doesn't try to hide the process; instead, he celebrates it. You can almost feel him standing there, mixing his colors and responding to the scene before him. Look at the way he builds the bank on the right, scrapes of yellow and tan that really convey the sandy surface. I'm reminded of the early landscapes of the Fauvist painters, like Maurice de Vlaminck, who also used bold, expressive color to capture the essence of a scene. But Kandinsky takes it a step further, moving towards abstraction and using color not just to describe the world, but to evoke emotion. For me, art is about the conversation between the artist, the materials, and the world around them, and this painting really shows that.