Lyrisches (Lyrical)

Wassily Kandinsky

Oil on canvas

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen

Lyrisches (Lyrical), painted in 1911, depicts a horse and rider at full gallop rendered with exceptional economy of means — a few sweeping lines and loose patches of colour that convey movement and energy rather than literal representation. Created during what Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen describes as Kandinsky's pivotal turning point between realism and abstraction, the work sits at the threshold of pure non-objective art. A Russian-born artist working in Munich, Kandinsky was a co-founder of the Der Blaue Reiter group that same year, and the horse-and-rider motif served as a central symbol throughout his work for the aspiration to move beyond objective representation. The title, chosen by the artist himself, reflects his ambition for painting to express mood and emotion as directly as music does.