A painting a day · No. 38 of 38
Composition VII
Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944)
1913 · Oil on canvas · State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow
The story
One of the first great abstract paintings: it shows no thing at all. Kandinsky thought painting could work like music, and named his biggest pictures 'Compositions', like a composer.
Look closer
- Try to find a centre. There is none: your eye keeps moving.
- Black lines run across the colour like notes over a chord.
- Some shapes are said to come from old themes — boats, riders, a flood — dissolved until you cannot see them.
Did you know
He made more than 30 drawings and studies for it, then painted the final canvas in about four days.
Why we can show it
Wassily Kandinsky died in 1944. UK copyright lasts for the artist’s life plus 70 years, so even under today’s rules this painting would have been free for anyone to show since 2015. The photograph is a faithful copy of a flat work, which creates no new copyright. We do not store the picture: it comes from Wikimedia Commons each time it is needed. More on this.