ZUM THEMA JÜNGSTES GERICHT — by Wassily Kandinsky
Daily Appreciation — 2, April,2019
Wassily Kandinsky
1866–1944
ZUM THEMA JÜNGSTES GERICHT (ON THE THEME OF THE LAST JUDGEMENT)
Signed with the artist’s monogram (lower left)
Oil and mixed media on canvas
18 1/2 by 20 1/2 in.
47 by 52 cm
Painted in 1913.
No figure played a greater role in the development and emergence of abstraction than Wassily Kandinsky. His role as the father of abstraction began with Der Blaue Reiter’s inaugural exhibition in December 1911 in which Kandinsky exhibited works which redefined the course of twentieth-century art. This exhibition simultaneously occurred during the release of his manifesto On the Spiritual in Art, in which Kandinsky revolutionized the role of the artist, transforming their purpose from mere painter to prophet. The aesthetic theories governing many of Kandinsky’s compositions throughout his career derived from this 1911 treatise in which he praised the power of color and its influence on the beholder. Zum Thema Jüngstes Gericht (On the Theme of the Last Judgment) exemplifies the transformative capability of color emphasized in Kandinsky’s 1911 manifesto, and is one of the earliest examples of entirely non-objective art.
Zum Thema Jüngstes Gericht (On the Theme of the Last Judgment) is undeniably similar in its powerful and eloquent expression to Kandinsky’s masterpiece Composition VII which resides in the permanent collection of the Tretiakov Gallery in Moscow. These ground-breaking works represent Kandinsky’s achievement of the almost totally abstract idiom which he conceived at this time. The present work exemplifies Kandinsky’s quest of abstraction and achieves and balance between color and form to display a joyous assembly of primary colors applied in fluid brushstrokes and sweeping forms. Works from this crucial period still have specific figurative elements which possessed symbolic qualities for the artist, such as the folkloric representation of a lake with boats or the horse and rider, and almost all include the sharply defined motif of a mountain. These early near-abstract works are vital to understanding Kandinsky’s concept of abstraction which would influence the development of painting throughout the twentieth-century.
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