Vasily Vasilyevich Kandinsky - Mit Booten - 31 x 21.5

• Artist: Wassily Kandinsky (Russian, 1866–1944)

• Title: Mit Booten (With Boats / Autumn Landscape with Boats), originally painted in 1908

• Art Movement: German Expressionism / Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) / Fauvism

Description

Painted during Wassily Kandinsky’s pivotal Murnau period in 1908, Mit Booten (With Boats) captures a harbor scene bursting with emotional resonance and chromatic intensity. Created just before Kandinsky transitioned fully into pure abstraction, the composition reflects his profound engagement with Bavarian folk art, Russian motifs, and French Fauvism.

The foreground is anchored by bold, expressive boats rendered in radiant yellow, deep pink, and soft blue hues resting upon reflective water. Kandinsky uses rhythmic, impasto-like brushstrokes to break down the surface of the lake into ripples of cerulean, cobalt, and emerald reflections. Along the distant shoreline, stylized cottages and autumnal foliage blaze in warm shades of vermilion, golden ochre, and violet, framed against a dark, brooding hill and a dynamic green-tinted sky. The flattened perspectives, thick outlines, and liberation of color from purely representational constraints make this artwork a masterclass in early 20th-century European modernism.