Kandinsky's artistic career was closely linked to Germany, where he had lived for extended periods before finally leaving Russia. In the late 1900s, the artist lived in Murnau, near Munich, where he worked extensively and made sketches from nature. At that time he followed the ideas of Expressionism — not so much in terms of the drama of life, which was the movement's main theme, but rather in his approach to form.

Kandinsky believed that "a subject (something real: man, tree, cloud) is just a kind of real flavor, side tone, and fragrance in the composition," so there was no need for its exact reproduction. Painting affects human consciousness through color and form. The artist understood form as a distribution of planes and lines, the balance of which expresses movement. Color carries the main burden — not only in the emotional coloring of the work, but also in the very construction of the composition. Form, meanwhile, either retains its subject outlines or loses them, as in the painting Lake.

Timeline

1896 1897 1898 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944