It’s always necessary to start with the name of a painting for the right perception of Kandinsky’s works (and not only his). The matter is that the artist, when characterizing abstract forms, often uses not quite geometrical terms. Thus, he immediately presents a certain conflict to the viewer at once, one can say that he puts the viewer in a dialectical frame of mind to understand his art better. The black, sharp-pointed form in this work is inside the murky grey misty environment, which the German word 'dumpf' — which can be more subtly translated as 'stifling' or 'depressing'.

References to reality are often present in Kandinsky’s abstract works. For example, the massive black mountain with three peaks in this picture reminds us of the Murnau landscapes, which Kandinsky painted in 1908-1909.It is worth remembering that in the years preceding World War I, when the artist was on the threshold of opening abstraction, he often used the motifs of his 'Bavarian' period to transform them into symbolic semi-abstract forms.

The picture is full of the noir aesthetics: dusty-smoky sky, a murky violet full moon. Possibly, the artist thought of presenting something sinister, similar to his early apocalyptic works. In this case, light-colored squares and rectangles may perfectly symbolize the bright dawn, like the lights of hope in the dark.

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