In Blue

A deep blue field holds a scattering of geometric shapes rendered in black, red, yellow, and white, with rounded and sharp-edged forms mixed together. A circle sits among the arrangement, anchoring the composition amid the sharper lines. Wassily Kandinsky made this piece in 1925, working in oil on cardboard. Kandinsky, who lived from 1866 to 1944, was a Russian-born artist associated with Expressionism, and his notable work Composition VII shows his lasting place in abstract art. Looking closely, the blue ground seems to recede and advance at once, letting the floating shapes appear almost weightless against it, as if suspended rather than painted on a flat surface.