Details
The image
Four zones of colour held inside a frame, each one built from circles, angles and crossing lines that seem to be in motion. Nothing is centred and nothing rests: the composition looks like an argument in which every element is talking at once.
Where it comes from
Kandinsky argued that painting should work like music, that colour and form could carry feeling without describing anything and that composition meant counterpoint rather than illustration. The idea belongs to the years before the First World War, when abstraction was being argued into existence in Munich and Paris and it entered graphic design through the same door.
On the wall
It brings movement and colour into a room without adding a subject, so it suits a living room, a study or a hallway with plain walls. Because the composition is dense, it needs space around it and a wall that is not too dark. In a group it should be the piece that sets the rhythm.
In company
Hung beside another piece from the Kandinsky collection, it reads as part of a series rather than a single picture.Avoid hanging it beside tightly drawn illustration, the freedom of the forms needs contrast.
