Houses at Murnau

Houses at Murnau is not yet a fully abstract painting. But it is not quite a representational one either. Painted in the small Bavarian market town of Murnau am Staffelsee, it shows a steeply tilted street with rooftops, chimneys, a hill in the distance, and a single small figure in the foreground.

What makes it special is the way the rooftops, road, and hill have been pulled out of their normal scale. Kandinsky tilts the perspective until the scene feels less like a street and more like a piece of music being played across the canvas.

The colors are doing more work than the lines. Burnt sienna, cadmium yellow, and viridian green carry the emotional weight. The shapes only suggest buildings. The palette is what gives the painting its strange, joyful, slightly anxious sound.

1908 was the year Kandinsky stopped being a representational painter. Within a year of this canvas he would produce his first completely abstract works. This painting is the visible turn of the wheel.