Small Yellow (Kleines Gelb)

A soft yellow field fills the background, crossed by a network of black lines that break the surface into shifting zones. Scattered among them are colored rectangles, a curving red arc, and a pointed orange triangle, all balanced against each other in a geometric arrangement without any recognizable figures or landscape. Wassily Kandinsky completed this piece in 1926 using oil on composition board, and it now belongs to the Yale University Art Gallery, where it entered the collection as a gift from the Collection Société Anonyme. Kandinsky, who lived from 1866 to 1944, worked within the Bauhaus movement and is also known for his piece Composition VII. One detail worth lingering on is how the red arc curls gently against the sharper edges of the triangle and rectangles, softening the otherwise rigid geometry of the composition.