Carol Barber

Wassily Kandinsky. The Blue Mountain. 1908/09. Oil on canvas. 106 x 96.6 cm. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, USA.

Thinking about abstract compositions , I looked up the work of the master, Kandinsky. I was fascinated by his transitional work, the paintings that were moving from natural representation to abstraction. Kandinsky found complex compositions in nature, capturing buildings, trees, and people in a compressed space filling the picture plane. He simplified the individual forms and differentiated them with black outlines but the shapes were filled with texture and vivid color. Many things were complex in these paintings such as texture, color, line and composition but the forms were simple. He then carried over the same visual language and elements into his improvisations.