Composition 8

Wassily Kandinsky was a Russian painter who moved to Munich in 1896.

As mentioned, he co-founded The Blue Rider - a German Expressionist group aiming to free colour and form from representation.

He is widely credited as the first painter to produce a purely abstract work - the First Abstract Watercolour in 1910.

By the time he painted Composition 8, Kandinsky had developed a complete visual language.

A circle was the most cosmic of all forms - the shape of the universe.

A triangle was aggressive, goal-directed.

A line's weight and angle carried feeling the way a note in music carries feeling.

Composition 8 is one of his most rigorous works - precise, architectural, and yet somehow warm.

The Guggenheim now holds one of the largest Kandinsky collections in the world.

This is a direct result of Hilla Rebay's passionate advocacy - as the museum's founding director and the person who convinced Solomon R. Guggenheim to collect abstract art.

Fun fact : however she was apparently extremely difficult to work with.

She continually argued with architect Wright and Guggenheim's family.

When S. Guggenheim died in 1949, his family removed her from the museum she had built.

Thus none of them got to see it through - the spiral building opened in 1959, a decade after Guggenheim's death, 6 months after Wright's death and years after Rebay was sacked.