Between 1908 and 1909, having fully absorbed and moved beyond Symbolism and Fauvism, Kandinsky began to shed the influences of any artistic movements and, groping his way forward, found his own path. This process meant, above all, liberating color, form, and line from concreteness. People, houses and landscapes in his paintings became less and less recognizable, more and more abstract. The 'First Abstract Watercolor', painted in 1910, is a highly significant work in this sense. In the same 1910 he wrote his treatise Concerning the Spiritual in Art in which he laid the philosophical foundation of his own art with a scientist’s diligence and a painter’s poetry.

The indistinct perspective and lack of a horizon in this watercolor, on the one hand, flatten and distort the perceived, on the other, they unite and organize. Among the harmony of the subtlest color blends, we can still guess at shapes of stones, plants, and birds. Should we decipher the symbols (it’s not for nothing that a “Swan” is included in the title) or take in the work purely and non-objectively (“classical” perception of abstractions)? The answer to this question can only be found in the eye of the beholder.

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