"We thought up the name while sitting at a cafe table. . . . Both of us were fond of blue things, [Franz] Marc of blue horses, and I of blue riders. So the title suggested itself."
(Quoted in Grohmann, Wassily Kandinsky: Life and Work, p. 78.)

Vasily Kandinsky (1866–1944). Blue Mountain (Der blaue Berg), 1908–09. Oil on canvas, 106 x 96.6 cm. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, By gift 41.505

For Kandinsky, the years 1908–14 were a crucial period of transition and experimentation. After traveling through Europe and North Africa, he returned to Germany and became a leading proponent of avant-garde painting. His approach changed from an almost academic style to one that used bold brushstrokes and strong, vibrant colors.

Kandinsky’s paintings of 1908–09 seem to strike out in several directions as though aiming to assimilate many influences. Although he continued to evoke images from Russian folklore and memories of his homeland, his colors, perhaps inspired by the Fauves, are bolder and brighter, and his forms have become more simplified.

In 1909, the year he completed Blue Mountain (Der blaue Berg, 1908–09), his style was becoming increasingly abstract and expressionistic, and the subjects of his paintings changed from the portrayal of natural events to apocalyptic narratives. By 1910 many of his canvases shared a common literary source, the book of Revelation with its visionary descriptions of the conflicts between good and evil and of the end of the world. The rider came to signify the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, who will bring epic destruction after which the world will be redeemed.

Kandinsky’s use of the horse-and-rider motif symbolized his crusade against conventional aesthetic values and his dream of a better, more spiritual future through the transformative powers of art. For Kandinsky, “the horse carries the rider quickly and sturdily. The rider, however, guides the horse. The artist’s talent carries him to great heights quickly and sturdily. The artist, however, guides his talent.” (Vasily Kandinsky, “Reminiscences” (1913), in Kandinsky, Complete Writings on Art, p. 370.) The rider is featured in many woodcuts, temperas, and oils, from its first appearance in the artist’s folk-inspired paintings, executed in his native Russia at the turn of the century, to his abstracted landscapes made in Munich during the early 1910s.

In 1911, Kandinsky and Marc founded the Blaue Reiter, the highly influential group of artists from the worlds of visual and folk art, music, and theater, united by a desire to express spiritual values in their work.

On January 2, 1911, Kandinsky attended a concert of works by the Viennese composer Arnold Schönberg (1874–1951), whose own break with tonal and harmonic conventions paralleled Kandinsky’s challenge to figurative art. Kandinsky instantly sensed an affinity between the music and his own move toward abstraction. The two artists began a long-standing friendship and correspondence, drawing inspiration from one another in their search to create new modes of expression.

• Before showing Blue Mountain to the class, divide students into pairs. Ask one student to face away from the screen, so that he/she cannot see the image, while the other looks at the work and describes it in as much detail as possible. The student who is listening should draw the image using the information from the partner’s verbal description only. After ten minutes, display the results and discuss the experience.
• What seems to be happening here? Let students imagine this scene as a single snapshot of a longer story. What might have happened just before this moment? What will happen afterward? They can write or draw their ideas.
• At this point in his artistic development, Kandinsky was moving away from depicting real-life scenes and toward a more abstract and imagined way of painting. Discuss which parts of this work might have been observed and which seem to have been imagined.

• Kandinsky used the image of the rider on horseback in many of his works. For him it symbolized an artistic and spiritual force that could vanquish materialistic thinking and battle the traditional limits of artistic expression. The rider appears in many different guises, as a romantic fairy-tale figure; a medieval knight; and Saint George, saving humankind from evil. Encourage students to think about an ideal that they see as threatened in today’s world and invent a symbol that embodies triumph over that danger.
  Social Studies


• Kandinsky and Schönberg established a strong friendship partially based on their shared artistic aspirations. Listen to music composed by Schönberg. Discuss which qualities in his music might have appealed to Kandinsky. What about his music might have seemed as daring and experimental as the paintings Kandinsky was creating?
  Visual Arts


• In 1912 Klänge (Sounds), Kandinsky’s book of poems and woodcuts, was published. His poem “Bassoon” begins with the following lines:
  
  Very large houses suddenly collapsed. Small houses remained standing. A fat hard egg-shaped orange-cloud suddenly hung over the town. It seemed to hang on to the pointed point of the steep spindly town hall tower and radiated violet.
  (Wassily Kandinsky, Sounds, trans. and with introduction by Elizabeth R. Napier [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981], p. 25)
  
  Another poem, “Seeing,” opens with the following lines:
  
  

  Blue, Blue got up, got up and fell.
  Sharp, Thin whistled and shoved, but didn’t get through.
  From every corner came a humming.
  FatBrown got stuck—it seemed for all eternity.
                   It seemed. It seemed.
  You must open your arms wider.
                   Wider. Wider.
  (Ibid., p. 21)

  
  
  The subjects of Kandinsky’s poems are wide-ranging and include unlikely transformations in an illogical universe. Have students write their own poems. Like Kandinsky, they should allow their imaginations to invent unusual events and settings. Then they can create an image to accompany their writings.
  English / Language Arts