Romantic Landscape

Three horses race across this swirling landscape, their riders leaning forward as if urging them faster, though you have to search a bit to find them among the loose strokes of color. Wassily Kandinsky painted this scene, called Romantic Landscape, in 1911, and the sense of motion is everywhere. A blazing orange sun hangs in the upper left corner, while the ground below tumbles through patches of blue, gold, and green. Kandinsky cared far more about capturing a feeling than about painting exactly what a horse or a hill looks like.

At this point in his life, Kandinsky was living in Germany and helping lead a group of artists known as Der Blaue Reiter, meaning "The Blue Rider." The name says a lot, since horses and riders were among his favorite subjects. This particular painting catches him at a turning point, right as he was leaving realistic imagery behind and moving toward pure abstraction. He was convinced that color and shape could stir our emotions directly, much like a piece of music can, with no need to copy the real world.

The horse and rider showed up again and again in Kandinsky's art, almost like a personal emblem for pushing ahead and breaking free of old rules. This work lands somewhere between the recognizable and the abstract, a snapshot of an artist mid leap into something new. Rather than a portrait of a real place, it reads more like the lingering memory of a wild gallop through open country.