title: Wassily Kandinsky Cossacks or Cosaques 1910–1

artist: Wassily kandinsky

date: 1910

source: link

credit: link

description: From The Tate: "This was painted at the moment in kandinsky's career when he was living in Germany, near Munich, and moving rapidly from a form of Expressionism towards Abstraction. It was acquired by the Tate Gallery in 1938 and in a letter to a friend not long after, kandinsky wrote 'an American woman living in London has bought a pre-war painting from me and presented it to the Tate Gallery in London! It is the first truly modern painting in the famous museum in London. The painting is called "Cosaques", dates from the year 1911, still bears traces of "the object" but makes nevertheless a wholly "concrete" impression'. (By the time of this letter 'concrete' had become a widely used term for abstract art as had 'non-objective'.) The painting was also, at one time, titled 'Battle'. The 'traces of "the object" ' which kandinsky mentions are as follows: in the upper left portion of the picture are two horses rearing up against each other, their front legs interlocking. Each has a Cossack (Russian cavalry) rider wearing a tall fur hat which kandinsky has here painted orange-red. Each is swinging a long curved sabre, painted mauve. Below the horses is a rainbow bridging a valley, and to the left of that, what appear to be two batteries of guns, one of which is firing, producing a cloud of red and orange flame. On the other side of the valley is a building suggesting a fortress and below it are three more cossacks again distinguishable by their orange hats. Two of them carry long black lances and the third has his arm extended and is leaning on his sabre. A flock of birds flies agitatedly in the sky."