Kohlgruber Street in Murnau

Wassily Kandinsky

Oil on cardboard

Merzbacher Kunststiftung

This vivid street scene captures the characterful Bavarian lanes of Murnau, a picturesque Alpine market town that became one of Kandinsky's most beloved subjects. Bold, non-naturalistic colors animate the building facades, with lush greens, warm yellows, and deep blues rendered in expressive, textured brushwork that pushes color toward emotional independence from the scene itself. Wassily Kandinsky, born in Moscow in 1866 and widely credited as one of the pioneers of Western abstraction, painted this work during a pivotal creative breakthrough in the summer of 1908, when time spent in Murnau with fellow artists Gabriele Münter, Alexei Jawlensky, and Marianne von Werefkin radically transformed his style from late Impressionism toward bold, expressive color painting. Hanging this work in your home is to own a window into the very moment abstraction was born — a vibrant, sun-drenched street that still looks almost exactly as Kandinsky painted it over a century ago.