Schwabing - Nikolaistrasse im Winter II

A mosaic of emerald green, vermilion, ochre and cobalt emerges from the icy blue expanse of Schwabing – Nikolaistrasse im Winter II. Across the foreground, bands of russet and golden brown cut through the snow, drawing the eye towards the brightly coloured façades beyond. Though Kandinsky has chosen an ordinary corner of suburban Munich as his subject, there is little that is prosaic about his treatment of it. Houses tilt and crowd against one another, trees dissolve into dense strokes of blue and violet, and the winter landscape itself becomes an unexpectedly rich field of colour. Already, the young Kandinsky was discovering that colour need not simply describe the world before him: it could heighten and transform it.

The present work belongs to the remarkable group of small oil studies that Kandinsky painted in and around Schwabing during the winter of 1901-1902. Kandinsky had arrived in Munich from Moscow in 1896, aged thirty, having abandoned a promising academic career to devote himself to painting. By the turn of the twentieth century he was increasingly dissatisfied with the constraints of studio practice and found a new freedom working directly before the landscape. It was in these unassuming, rapidly worked landscapes that some of his earliest and most consequential experiments with colour took place.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, Schwabing was itself undergoing transformation. Once a village on the outskirts of Munich, it was rapidly being absorbed into the expanding city and had become a magnet for artists, writers and intellectuals. Kandinsky repeatedly painted its streets, gardens and houses, responding in particular to the picturesque remnants of the historic neighbourhood. In Schwabing – Nikolaistrasse im Winter II, this sense of transition is palpable. The crooked silhouettes of the buildings retain the intimacy of a village, while the tracks running emphatically across the foreground introduce a distinctly modern element into the scene.