Improvisation 27 (Garden of Love II)

Wassily Kandinsky

Oil on canvas

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Painted in 1912 during Kandinsky's pivotal transition toward pure abstraction, Improvisation 27 (Garden of Love II) is an oil on canvas composed of dynamic dark lines and bold, colorful abstract masses that suggest three iterations of an embracing couple surrounded by serpentine forms. The subtitle alludes to the Garden of Eden, grounding the composition in a broadly spiritual rather than strictly narrative reading—consistent with Kandinsky's theoretical framework articulated in his 1911 treatise Concerning the Spiritual in Art, which called for a new artistic language of form and color capable of expressing inner, preconscious experience. A Russian-born painter who worked primarily in Munich during these years, Kandinsky was a founding figure of the Der Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) movement and is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of abstract art. The painting entered the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of the Alfred Stieglitz Collection, having been purchased by Stieglitz at the landmark 1913 Armory Show in New York—the first occasion on which the work was exhibited in the United States.