Black and Violet, Kandinsky, 1923 Postcard

The Black and Violet painting ranges among the artist’s most important works resulting from a wonderful combination of circumstances, which can occur only a few times in a lifetime, even with creative artists of such caliber. The subject matter of the Black and Violet painting is determined by two large dominating forms of corresponding colors and their accompanying forms. There are the two sailboats plowing through the calm water on the right, and the sinister black cloud of the approaching storm on the left (or the darkening world during a solar eclipse?), which has already drawn up with the third one whose mast is topped with the Russian flag. Such an interpretation may well be read as an illustrated history of the Kandinskys’ departure from Russia.