“Verses without words”
Verses without Words (1903) is a portfolio of sixteen woodcuts. It was first published in Russia on dark cardboard sheets measuring 32.9 × 24.9 cm.
In this portfolio, the influence of modernist and symbolist tendencies of the "World of Art" association becomes evident — developing the idea of the painter's self-expression through his works, rather than a simple reflection of reality. In the graphics, for example, symbolism was expressed through the frequent use of silhouettes, outlines, and contour lines; in the color works, their conventionality and decorativeness were emphasized.
Conceptually, this work refers to the idea of synesthesia in art, the essence of which lies in the interpenetration of pictorial, poetic, and musical origins. Kandinsky later developed these ideas in his works and wrote about them in his theoretical texts. The concept of synesthesia would serve as nourishment for the ideas from which the painter's main root — abstraction — would grow.
Here is a comment from the website of the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA): "In the portfolio Verses without Words, Vasily Kandinsky leaves the modern world and all its distractions and sails away on Viking ships and down the Rhine to a fairy-tale world filled with gallant mounted riders, elegant ladies, peaceful landscapes, and onion-domed churches. Frustrated with his attempts at writing poetry in German, Kandinsky used these woodcuts to give shape to the nostalgia for his Russian homeland that he found impossible to put into words. As he explained to his companion, the painter Gabriele Münter, 'I must do them, for I cannot rid myself of my thoughts (or possibly dreams) any other way.' For Kandinsky, the woodcut — with its simplifying imagery, decorative patterns, and concentration on the essential — was akin to lyric poetry."
The imagery in these prints was central to the symbolic vocabulary that appeared throughout Kandinsky's early work. Five of the woodcuts repeat previous compositions, and Kandinsky returned to five others in later prints and paintings. For the first time here, in Verses without Words, Kandinsky used the horse-and-rider motif — his symbol of a warrior for a new art.
