Wassily Kandinsky- ‘A Composition VII’ (1913)



1. This piece entitled ‘A Composition VII’ by Wassily Kandinsky caught my eye. This piece was created using oil paints, but it is said that there were many drafts of this piece in watercolor before its final work. I think the artist was bearing in made compositional techniques when creating the piece given its name. He uses a lot of dimension by layering the colors and almost letting them bleed into one another. He also uses stark black on top of the colorful background to create character and signify a sort of skeleton-like figure on top of the piece. He seems to use a lot of line work, incorporating shapes to fill the canvas and allow the eye to move around and make sense/ organize the chaos on the canvas.


2. One compositional technique I believe Kandinsky uses is asymmetrical balance. The eye immediately goes to the black sort of face to the left of the canvas. Although that part is off center, it allows us to also swirl around and delve into the piece, which I believe was him bearing in mind the golden rule. There is also a lot of movement within this piece, the viewer is almost pulled into this whirl wind of colors and questioning where they are and what is going on. The different colors have a sort of cohesive rhythm to them as well, the purples and reds and blues seem to be mixed colors that maybe the artist created himself by mixing them together so that they are all a derivative of one another. The piece has a lot of bright colors that are muted or watered down which make the overall theme come across as dark.


3. I consider Kandinsky’s use of composition to be effective because of how striking the painting is. The black shapes on top of the whimsical color-work allows us to be immersed in the artists vision for the piece. I love the rhythm within the piece and that the eye travels in an off-centered or a symmetrical way. I think I can integrate the imperfections of this piece into my own work, as we can see this doesn’t involve realism. I often get bent on being a perfectionist or trying to make my art realistic, but art is so many things, the experimentation of color, fluid line and shapes in this piece will be something that inspires me to be more free and let my style escape from my hands more naturally.