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拍品专文
Bursting with a kaleidoscopic play of vivid colour and vitalistic energy, Das bunte Leben (La vie mélangée) is among the early masterworks of Wassily Kandinsky’s storied career. Executed on a monumental scale that reveals the artist’s bold ambitions for the work, the canvas is alive with detail and incident, independent touches of vibrant pigment building a mosaic-like pattern that describes a panoramic, romantic view of the often conflicting and contrasting aspects of the lived experience. The scene teems with intriguing vignettes, the lively cast of characters offering juxtaposing visions of love and death, peace and chaos, danger and an idyllic, festive atmosphere, creating a rich symphonic composition that conveys the multifaceted nature of human existence.
Painted in the spring of 1907, while the artist was living in Paris and immersed in the extraordinary, fervent energy of the city’s art scene, Das bunte Leben is a true tour-de-force, showcasing the deeply imaginative and innovative nature of Kandinsky’s painting at this pivotal moment. His works of this period exhibit a sense of lyrical romanticism, their inventive compositions and highly stylised approach to figuration and form conjuring a poetic pictorial universe unique to the artist. Colour takes on a powerful force within these paintings, the non-naturalistic tones and flowing, expressive brushwork dazzling the eye and providing structure and shape to the scene. Marrying the cultural traditions of his native Russia with the most cutting-edge developments of the artistic avant-garde that he had absorbed in Paris, the painting illustrates the extraordinary power of Kandinsky’s vision, as he carved out a name for himself as one of the leading thinkers and innovators of modern art.
Kandinsky in Paris
Das bunte Leben dates to the final months of Kandinsky’s seminal stay in Paris between May 1906 and June 1907. Though the artist had visited the city on several fleeting sojourns prior to this, this was his first opportunity to immerse himself fully in the city’s fervent arts and cultural scene for an extended period of time. He was joined on this trip by his partner and fellow painter, Gabriele Münter. Travelling from the Italian Riviera, where they had spent much of the previous winter, the couple arrived in Paris in late May, renting furnished rooms on the rue des Ursulines in the 5th arrondissement, not far from the Luxembourg Gardens. A month later they relocated to a spacious apartment at 4 petite rue des Binelles in the quiet suburb of Sèvres.
Though based slightly outside the bustling heart of the city, Kandinsky and Münter remained acutely aware of the developments within the avant-garde. Paris represented the crucible of modern art during these years, its ateliers and cafes abuzz with new voices, stimulating ideas and experimental techniques, reaching a fever-pitch of innovation. While art periodicals such as Mir Iskusstva and Die Künst für Alle had previously fuelled their knowledge of contemporary art, now Kandinsky and Münter were able to experience the power of these works first-hand. Both painters immersed themselves in this vibrant milieu, enjoying regular visits to exhibitions, dealers and cutting-edge collectors across the city, making new acquaintances and embracing the opportunity to expand their artistic horizons. As well as the large annual Salons d’Automne and des Indépendants, they paid visits to the commercial galleries of Clovis Sagot and Berthe Weill, both of whom regularly showcased the work of young contemporaries, as well as the renowned private collections of the Steins.
The Golden Age
Through these experiences, Kandinsky gained an in-depth knowledge of the different threads of Pointillism, Post-Impressionism and Fauvism that were evolving within the avant-garde during this period, all of them leaving their own indelible mark on his painterly vision. Perhaps most intriguingly, though, was his discovery of the prevalence of paintings devoted to epic, utopian subjects, each representing different artistic impressions of an inspiring Golden Age. This profound topic seemed to be at the forefront of contemporary artistic conversations in Paris at this time, as painters sought to reconcile elements of tradition with the spirit of the new century, searching for a way forward that would break new ground. As Reinhard Spieler has noted, these ideas were intensely pursued during the years 1904-1908, “for it was then that the younger generation of artists, engaging critically both with each other and with their teachers, defined for themselves one last shared artistic mission…, to reconcile what was fast becoming irreconcilable – nineteenth- and twentieth-century art, tradition and the avant-garde, nature and technology, art and reality…” (“The Dream of a Golden Age” in H. Friedel and A. Hoberg, eds., Vasily Kandinsky, London, 2016, p. 58).
At the Salon des Indépendants in the spring of 1906, just before Kandinsky and Münter arrived in Paris, Matisse had caused a sensation with his sensuous Le Bonheur de vivre (1905-1906), showing a world in which humanity and nature were united in flat passages of bold colour. Described by the artist as “my Arcadia,” the painting was executed on an enormous canvas two and a half metres wide, and featured nude figures reclining, revelling, frolicking together in dance, in an effusive outpouring of joy and serenity (quoted in H. Spurling, The Unknown Matisse: A Life of Henri Matisse, 1869-1908, London, 1998, vol. 1, p. 337). The theme followed on from Paul Signac’s Au temps d’Harmonie (l’âge d’or n’est pas dans le passé, il est dans l’avenir) (1893-1895), a sun-filled, harmonious vision of society closely tied to the artist’s own political beliefs, in which people of all ages and backgrounds are gathered together in a moment of tranquil relaxation and peace.
Matisse had likely seen Signac’s grand painting during a visit to the artist’s home in Saint-Tropez in 1904, and was inspired to explore a similar theme, creating a painting of a group of nude female bathers on the Cote d’Azur enjoying a picnic beside the sea, their forms and the landscape rendered in bright hues and a loose, pointillist style. Matisse decided to return to the theme in the second half of 1905, beginning a new version of the subject, which he titled Le Bonheur de vivre. Following his seminal trip to Collioure the previous summer, Matisse’s colours had grown bolder and further detached from naturalistic depiction, while incongruities in scale and perspective were used to enhance and accentuate the internal force and rhythmic power of the composition. After the Salon des Indépendants closed, Le Bonheur de vivre made its way to the apartment of Leo and Gertrude Stein, who boldly proclaimed it to be “the most important painting of our age” (quoted in Spieler, op. cit., 2016, p. 65). It is possible that Kandinsky and Münter encountered the work during a visit to the rue de Fleurus, following their arrival in the city that summer.
For both Matisse and Signac, their choice of subject allowed them to envision the promise of a new, idealised way life, creating a form of modern day allegorical painting that would inspire and challenge their viewers. For Paul Gauguin, the theme offered something more profound and spiritual – in his painting D'où venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous? (1897-1898), for example, he examined the meaning and purpose of life, presenting an enigmatic meditation on destiny on a canvas that stretches over three and a half metres wide. Read from right to left in a continuous progression, the picture presents an allegory of life and death, playing out in an idyllic setting of the Tahitian forest, where the figures’ movements and interactions are laced with hidden meaning and mystery. Gauguin’s paintings from Tahiti were an important influence on André Derain through the opening years of the twentieth century, prompting him to paint his own dynamic vision of an enigmatic cast of characters energetically cavorting in a forest glade in L’âge d’or (1905), the highly stylised Divisionist picture pulsating with colour and energy. Derain followed this shortly afterwards with Le Danse (1906), another fantastical vision of a dream-like arcadia, which was seen as a repost to the grand statement Matisse had made in Le Bonheur de vivre.
Deftly attuned to the artistic zeitgeist, Kandinsky would have been well aware of the ongoing debates and ideas that were swirling through the avant-garde, and the repeated engagement with the concept of the Golden Age. His time in Paris allowed him to deepen his understanding and appreciation of the topic even further, experiencing not only the forceful power of some of these works first-hand, but also to reflect on the lineage of the theme, and the manner in which the subject had progressed and developed through the innovations of each artist’s individual response. In 1907, Kandinsky challenged himself to follow their lead, and offer his own take on the theme in a new, grandly scaled painting. Like Signac, Gauguin, Derain and Matisse before him, Kandinsky sought to convey a romantic utopian vision that delved into the multifaceted nature of human existence. The result was Das bunte Leben, a work that would allow Kandinsky to stake his own claim to a place within the pantheon of great modern masters, engaging directly with this striking subject that continued to grip the most daring painters of the avant-garde.
Folklore and Fantasy
As he embarked on this grand composition, Kandinsky sought to translate the theme through his own visionary pictorial language, creating a work that responded to these recent painterly explorations, while remaining rooted in his own artistic identity. To this end, he turned to the folkloric traditions of his native Russia for inspiration, particularly the epic, poetic songs known as byliny, exploring characters rooted in a world of knights and lovers, magical beings, both sinister and benevolent, and classic heroes who embodied courage, strength and valour. Drawing on a range of legends and stories that were ingrained in his imagination and memory, Kandinsky’s motifs Russes reveal the strength of the ties that bound the artist to his homeland, which he described as “the tuning fork of my painting” (“Reminiscences,” 1913; in K.C. Lindsay and P. Vergo, Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art, New York, 1994, p. 382).
When Kandinsky arrived in Paris in 1906, he eagerly discovered there was a strong reciprocal interest among Parisian audiences for modern Russian art. A landmark exhibition staged that autumn further increased the enthusiasm for les arts Russe – organised by the impresario Serge Diaghilev, and featuring over 700 works of art, it set out to promote and position Russian culture on a European stage, culminating in a grand celebration of the recent innovations of the so-called Silver Age. In the introduction of the exhibition’s dedicated catalogue, Diaghilev explained his approach and goals: “This exhibition offers an overview of our art’s development as viewed through a modern lens. It features all the elements that have directly shaped the contemporary spirit of our country. It presents a faithful portrait of the Russian art scene today, characterised by its genuine vitality, its respectful admiration for the past, and its ardent faith in the future” (Exposition de l'art Russe, Salon d’Automne, Paris, 1906, p. 7).
The exhibition was met with critical and popular acclaim in Paris. Though he was exhibiting in a different section of the Salon d’Automne that year, independently of the Exposition de l’art Russe, Kandinsky is known to have visited Diaghilev’s show several times, and may have been inspired to delve into these themes with a renewed intensity in his own work as a result. Over the ensuing months, a flurry of new compositions on Russian themes emerged, marking the high-point of his early paintings. Rather than focusing on single stories or specific scenes from well-known tales, Kandinsky increasingly combined elements and iconography from multiple different narratives in his compositions, blending storylines and characters to conjure an overall atmosphere of mystical, timeless magic. As he later explained, with these works “I tried, by lines and by distribution of mottled points of colour, to express the musical spirit of Russia. Other pictures of that period reflected the contradictions, and later the eccentricities of Russia” (letter to W. Grohmann, 12 October 1924; quoted in W. Grohmann, Wassily Kandinsky: Life and Work, London, 1959, p. 51).
A Romantic Arcadia
These ideas found their full expression in Das bunte Leben, resulting in an extraordinary, romantic narrative painting constructed around intriguing vignettes that blended his knowledge and memories of these stories and legends with a new sense of imagination. The iconography of the painting is deliberately mysterious – a bustling crowd of people of all ages and backgrounds gather together in a bucolic, rural setting. The multitude of diverse characters – ranging from pilgrims and peasants, to saintly figures and regal, courtly characters – are distributed across the canvas in clusters, with no clear narrative thread uniting them together.
Kandinsky structures the composition into clear bands of action, leading the eye through successive layers from one group to the other, towards the walled city perched on the hill in the distance. Here, the brightly coloured domes, roofs and towers within the walled citadel rise upwards, the individual character of the buildings picked out in short strokes of pigment, which offer a contrasting note to the elongated curving strokes that sweep across the hillside. At ground level, a colourful wooden church is glimpsed through the trees, anchoring the landscape in a distinctly Russian setting. Among the tapestry of figures that fill the landscape, certain details may be tied to specific tales and legends. In the tree canopy, for example, the house of the witch Baba Yaga appears amid the foliage, balanced precariously on chicken feet and tilting slightly towards the picture plane, suggesting it is on the move. In the centre of the picture, Kandinsky appears to include two saints, the figures of Boris and Gleb, canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1015. Often shown standing together, side-by-side, the brothers were a common subject for icon painters through the centuries.
In contrast, other figures are more emblematic – the elegant mother cradling her child, the weary traveller, with a long white beard guided by his walking stick and bearing a heavy pack, the monk dressed in dark robes adorned with skulls and the beggar at his feet. As we move through the successive layers of the canvas, Kandinsky simplifies the details of his figures as they reduce in size, so that we are forced to discern their character through just a handful of subtle details. For example, the peaceful rower that cuts through the water is delineated in just a few short strokes of colour, yet we are able to detect the energy required to propel the boat forward; similarly, a boy and girl chase one another through the fields directly below the walled town, their bodies filled with a spontaneous sense of joy, so that we can almost hear the hoots of laughter from them.
In the middle-ground, a crowd comes together in a clash of spears at the water’s edge, the conflict at odds with the festive atmosphere at the front of the scene, where people eat, laugh and mingle as they are serenaded by the figure playing a pipe. This sense of peace is further disrupted by the crowd of men in the middle of the composition, where a series of arguments appear to have broken out beneath the trees, the gestures of the various characters suggesting they are locked in increasingly more disastrous and dangerous levels of disagreement. On one side, a character throws his hands up in the air in frustration as he shouts at his companion, while another man brandishes a dagger and appears to lunge towards his adversary, as if to strike him. At the edge of this group, Kandinsky draws our attention to the archer, who notches his arrow and takes aim at the small, innocent squirrel perched on the branches above, watching the action unfold.
The knight, meanwhile, glimpsed between the trees as he raises his sword in the air, is another iteration of the artist’s famed horse and rider motif, which Kandinsky had first explored in the opening years of the century. A symbol for the artistic move beyond realistic representation, the character would later become the iconic emblem of the Blaue Reiter group Kandinsky founded in Munich alongside Franz Marc. Here, the knight appears to charge forwards, his steed picking up its front hooves as it rears slightly, the longer hair of the horse’s legs captured in a flick of paint that echoes their naturally feathered appearance. The knight is clad in layers of armour, the dome of his helmet described in dashes of pigment, while a sheet of chainmail drapes down his back, its interlocking surface picked out in small touches of blue. Though seemingly dressed for battle, he moves away from the skirmishes glimpsed elsewhere within the scene and steers his horse through the trees towards a destination, and a future, unknown.
Following his trajectory through the trees, the viewer is drawn towards the pair of courtly lovers partially concealed from the other revellers behind one of the trunks, as they share a tender, intimate exchange. The woman gazes up at her paramour, her arms resting on his shoulders as she tilts her chin up for a kiss, the palpable sense of longing and passion infusing their forms with a melancholic tension. They are so wrapped up in one another, they appear oblivious to the fact that just behind them, a funeral procession makes its way along the track at the edge of the cemetery, monks in decorative robes followed by coffin-bearers and mourners, creating a jarring juxtaposition that emphasises the coexistence of love and death in a single moment.
Such symbolic allusions and essential dichotomies are rife throughout the painting – the young contrasted with the old, the peaceful with the violent, despair and happiness, poverty and wealth, love and loss, all coexisting in the same moment, in the same space, in the same lifetime. At the same time, one detail appears to be a highly personal addition by the artist, rooted in the precise moment of the painting’s creation – the cat in the lower right corner of the painting is most likely a portrait of Kandinsky and Münter’s beloved pet Waske, who appears in a number of photographs from their time together in Paris.
Colour Set Free
In the compositions devoted to les motifs Russes from the year 1906-1907, Kandinsky reached the most important stylistic and technical innovations of his early career, the invented imagery and fantastical romantic scenes providing a path to the freer use of colour and form. In Das bunte Leben, Kandinsky eschews contour lines, delineating the scene through a deftly placed network of mosaic-like particles of resplendent colour. Broadening his brushstrokes to the point where each mark takes on an autonomous formal function of its own, the independent strokes coalesce and shift as they describe the rich cast of characters and the otherworldly setting they occupy. From small dots and fluid dashes, to elongated curving strokes and block-like elements, Kandinsky varies his facture to individualise his various characters, from the intricate ornamentation and patterning of their costumes, to the particulars of their features, and the essential energies of their physicality.
Against the dark, black ground, the bright touches of pigment stand out and achieve a greater luminosity, almost pulsing before the eye, a feature that accentuates the dreamlike setting of the scene. As Kandinsky noted, black was “externally the most toneless colour, against which all other colours, even the weakest, sound stronger and more precise” (quoted in J. Hahl-Koch, Kandinsky, London, 1993, p. 92). In Das bunte Leben, he uses a mixture of opaque gouaches and tempera which vary in intensity and depth, ranging from soft pastels to sonorous, bright reds and vibrant cobalt blues. By this stage of his career, Kandinsky was not interested in the optical mixing advocated by the Neo-Impressionists and the use of complementary colours, but rather the power of pure pigment, intuitively modulated and applied, guided by the artist’s eye and inner spirit. This leads to unexpected contrasts, such as the aged traveller’s mint green beard, the almost claret-coloured flush of the reveller’s cheeks, and the deep purple clouds in the distance, which do not seem to suggest a storm, but rather the soft play of light as the sun sets.
These techniques reveal the bold, highly experimental way of seeing that Kandinsky was exploring at this time. By allowing his strokes of pure pigment to play an independent and autonomous role in this way, Kandinsky reached a deeper understanding of colour’s expressive and structural potential, simplifying and breaking his subjects down into an abstracted interplay of pigment alone. This break-through marked a crucial stepping stone on the artist’s creative path – this new freedom of colour would take root and find bold expression in his Murnau landscapes the following year, and continue to evolve, allowing him to reach pure abstraction in his paintings.
A Bold Artistic Statement
Kandinsky had strong ambitions for Das bunte Leben from its very inception. The scale of the painting, executed on the largest canvas the artist had completed to this date which he had specially ordered for the purpose, combined with the visionary, philosophical subject matter that plays out within the landscape, clearly indicate that he viewed it as a statement piece that would catch the attention of important critics and fellow artists.
The painting made its public debut at the Union Internationale des Beaux-Arts et des Lettres in Angers in May of 1907, as part of a major showcase of Kandinsky’s work. Featuring over a hundred artworks across all media, the section dedicated solely to his oeuvre was a watershed moment in his career, positioning him among the leading figures of the avant-garde. In his review of the exhibition, the chief critic of Les Tendences Nouvelles, Gérome-Maësse, remarked upon the extraordinary power of Kandinsky’s dynamic oeuvre, which was arranged on a single wall. “…the works of Kandinsky unfailingly entice the spectator. They intrigue him, then they captivate him…,” he wrote. “The painting which occupies our attention [almost certainly Das bunte Leben] is expressive, seductive, aggressive and charming, sometimes exaggerated, volatile and often disquieting, but it absorbs us and stirs our emotions” (“Le Musée du Peuple” in Les Tendances Nouvelles, no. 30, May 1907, pp. 560-561 ; quoted in J.D. Fineberg, Kandinsky in Paris 1906-1907, Ann Arbor, 1984, p. 71). From there, Kandinsky sent Das bunte Leben to the Salon d’Automne in Paris, which opened at the Grand Palais in October 1907, where it would be seen by all of the great critics and names of the artworld.
Das bunte Leben was subsequently returned to Kandinsky, and appears to have remained with him until it was acquired by Herwarth Walden’s Galerie der Sturm. Walden was a key figure within the German avant-garde at this time, a forward-thinking publisher, critic and gallerist who championed the daring work of the Expressionists, the Cubists and the Futurists. Writing to Kandinsky on 15 September 1912, he proclaimed “I consider… you to be the most important European phenomenon of the present” (quoted in Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and The Blue Rider, exh. cat., Tate, London, 2024, p. 186). The painting was included in the pivotal exhibition Kandinsky Kollektiv-Ausstellung in October 1912, which subsequently travelled to a host of cities in the years preceding the First World War, including Rotterdam, Brussels, Hamburg, Frankfurt and Munich; it also featured in the important album of the artist’s work, Kandinsky, 1901-1913, compiled and published under the Der Sturm imprint in 1913.
The Lewenstein Collection
In November 1927, Das bunte Leben was acquired by the Jewish businessman and collector Emanuel Albert Lewenstein and his wife, Hedwig Lewenstein-Weyermann. Director of the family firm, which specialised in sewing machines, Emanuel was among a group of forward-looking collectors of modern art in Amsterdam during the inter-war years, building a diverse collection that hung in the family home at 37 De Lairessestraat. Emanuel’s father, Adolph, had established the A. Lewenstein Naaimachines company in Amsterdam in 1868 for the purpose of selling and manufacturing sewing machines. Within a few years, the Lewenstein brand had become a household name in the Netherlands, renowned for their machines’ durability and stylish designs.
Emanuel followed his father into the family business and took on the role of director at the Lewenstein company, which subsequently became known as N.V. Amsterdamse Naaimachinehandel. Alongside his business acumen, Emanuel harboured a keen appreciation for art, a passion that was most likely inspired by his parents – he is believed to have inherited an impressive group of Rembrandt prints from his father. Emanuel initially focused on acquiring artworks by Dutch contemporary artists, such as Jozef Israëls, Jan Toorop,and Jan Sluyters, some of whom he knew personally. This was complemented by a growing interest in French modernism and the German avant-garde, fuelled by his maternal cousin, the artist and photographer Paul Citroen, who had previously worked with Walden at the Galerie Der Sturm in Berlin.
Emanuel purchased works by Jean Metzinger, Oskar Kokoschka and Odilon Redon from Citroen through the 1920s, many of which had previously passed through Walden’s gallery. Das bunte Leben was the second painting by Kandinsky that the Lewensteins purchased from Citroen, following their acquisition of Bild mit Häusern (1909) four years prior. After Emanuel’s death in 1930, the couple’s art collection passed into the sole ownership of Hedwig, who organised for several pieces, including Das bunte Leben, to be placed on loan to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Upon Hedwig’s passing in 1937, her will requested that the family art collection be equally divided and distributed between the couple’s two children – Robert Gotschalk Lewenstein and Wilhelmine Helene Lewenstein.
However, there is no indication that this division ever took place. Wilhelmine left Amsterdam shortly after her mother’s death, emigrating with her husband to Mozambique; around the same time, Robert’s marriage to the German actress Irma Klein broke down and the couple separated in late 1938. Robert subsequently resigned from his position at the Lewenstein company and moved to Vence in the South of France with his new partner, Shirley Goodman. While both Robert and Wilhelmine were living abroad when War broke out, their incomes were frozen and their shares in the Lewenstein company confiscated and forcibly sold following the Aryanisation of the company. Several members of the extended Lewenstein family perished in the concentration camps, including Robert and Wilhelmine’s uncle Siegfried, and aunts Rosa and Julie.
The war also resulted in the loss of the family’s art collection. In October 1940, just five months after the German invasion of the Netherlands, works from the Lewenstein collection were offered for sale at the Amsterdam auction house Frederik Muller & Cie, under the property title “Estate of L…., Amsterdam.” It remains unknown under whose direction these works came to market, or who benefited from the proceeds. Kandinsky’s Das bunte Leben was among the lots on offer, having been removed from the Stedelijk the previous month on an unidentified person’s instructions and handed over to the art dealer Abraham Querido. The painting was purchased from Frederik Muller & Cie by Salomon B. Slijper for 250 Dutch guilders, who returned the painting to the Stedelijk Museum almost immediately for safe-keeping. It was later sold by his widow to the Bayerische Landesbank in 1972, who placed it on long-term loan to the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich, where it hung for almost five decades.
After the war, Robert and Wilhelmine attempted to uncover what had happened to their parents’ art collection, with Wilhelmine specifically searching for information relating to Kandinsky’s Das bunte Leben. Following years of diligent research and legal action by the Lewenstein heirs, Das bunte Leben was successfully restituted to the family in 2023 from the Bayerische Landesbank.
Painted in the spring of 1907, while the artist was living in Paris and immersed in the extraordinary, fervent energy of the city’s art scene, Das bunte Leben is a true tour-de-force, showcasing the deeply imaginative and innovative nature of Kandinsky’s painting at this pivotal moment. His works of this period exhibit a sense of lyrical romanticism, their inventive compositions and highly stylised approach to figuration and form conjuring a poetic pictorial universe unique to the artist. Colour takes on a powerful force within these paintings, the non-naturalistic tones and flowing, expressive brushwork dazzling the eye and providing structure and shape to the scene. Marrying the cultural traditions of his native Russia with the most cutting-edge developments of the artistic avant-garde that he had absorbed in Paris, the painting illustrates the extraordinary power of Kandinsky’s vision, as he carved out a name for himself as one of the leading thinkers and innovators of modern art.
Kandinsky in Paris
Das bunte Leben dates to the final months of Kandinsky’s seminal stay in Paris between May 1906 and June 1907. Though the artist had visited the city on several fleeting sojourns prior to this, this was his first opportunity to immerse himself fully in the city’s fervent arts and cultural scene for an extended period of time. He was joined on this trip by his partner and fellow painter, Gabriele Münter. Travelling from the Italian Riviera, where they had spent much of the previous winter, the couple arrived in Paris in late May, renting furnished rooms on the rue des Ursulines in the 5th arrondissement, not far from the Luxembourg Gardens. A month later they relocated to a spacious apartment at 4 petite rue des Binelles in the quiet suburb of Sèvres.
Though based slightly outside the bustling heart of the city, Kandinsky and Münter remained acutely aware of the developments within the avant-garde. Paris represented the crucible of modern art during these years, its ateliers and cafes abuzz with new voices, stimulating ideas and experimental techniques, reaching a fever-pitch of innovation. While art periodicals such as Mir Iskusstva and Die Künst für Alle had previously fuelled their knowledge of contemporary art, now Kandinsky and Münter were able to experience the power of these works first-hand. Both painters immersed themselves in this vibrant milieu, enjoying regular visits to exhibitions, dealers and cutting-edge collectors across the city, making new acquaintances and embracing the opportunity to expand their artistic horizons. As well as the large annual Salons d’Automne and des Indépendants, they paid visits to the commercial galleries of Clovis Sagot and Berthe Weill, both of whom regularly showcased the work of young contemporaries, as well as the renowned private collections of the Steins.
The Golden Age
Through these experiences, Kandinsky gained an in-depth knowledge of the different threads of Pointillism, Post-Impressionism and Fauvism that were evolving within the avant-garde during this period, all of them leaving their own indelible mark on his painterly vision. Perhaps most intriguingly, though, was his discovery of the prevalence of paintings devoted to epic, utopian subjects, each representing different artistic impressions of an inspiring Golden Age. This profound topic seemed to be at the forefront of contemporary artistic conversations in Paris at this time, as painters sought to reconcile elements of tradition with the spirit of the new century, searching for a way forward that would break new ground. As Reinhard Spieler has noted, these ideas were intensely pursued during the years 1904-1908, “for it was then that the younger generation of artists, engaging critically both with each other and with their teachers, defined for themselves one last shared artistic mission…, to reconcile what was fast becoming irreconcilable – nineteenth- and twentieth-century art, tradition and the avant-garde, nature and technology, art and reality…” (“The Dream of a Golden Age” in H. Friedel and A. Hoberg, eds., Vasily Kandinsky, London, 2016, p. 58).
At the Salon des Indépendants in the spring of 1906, just before Kandinsky and Münter arrived in Paris, Matisse had caused a sensation with his sensuous Le Bonheur de vivre (1905-1906), showing a world in which humanity and nature were united in flat passages of bold colour. Described by the artist as “my Arcadia,” the painting was executed on an enormous canvas two and a half metres wide, and featured nude figures reclining, revelling, frolicking together in dance, in an effusive outpouring of joy and serenity (quoted in H. Spurling, The Unknown Matisse: A Life of Henri Matisse, 1869-1908, London, 1998, vol. 1, p. 337). The theme followed on from Paul Signac’s Au temps d’Harmonie (l’âge d’or n’est pas dans le passé, il est dans l’avenir) (1893-1895), a sun-filled, harmonious vision of society closely tied to the artist’s own political beliefs, in which people of all ages and backgrounds are gathered together in a moment of tranquil relaxation and peace.
Matisse had likely seen Signac’s grand painting during a visit to the artist’s home in Saint-Tropez in 1904, and was inspired to explore a similar theme, creating a painting of a group of nude female bathers on the Cote d’Azur enjoying a picnic beside the sea, their forms and the landscape rendered in bright hues and a loose, pointillist style. Matisse decided to return to the theme in the second half of 1905, beginning a new version of the subject, which he titled Le Bonheur de vivre. Following his seminal trip to Collioure the previous summer, Matisse’s colours had grown bolder and further detached from naturalistic depiction, while incongruities in scale and perspective were used to enhance and accentuate the internal force and rhythmic power of the composition. After the Salon des Indépendants closed, Le Bonheur de vivre made its way to the apartment of Leo and Gertrude Stein, who boldly proclaimed it to be “the most important painting of our age” (quoted in Spieler, op. cit., 2016, p. 65). It is possible that Kandinsky and Münter encountered the work during a visit to the rue de Fleurus, following their arrival in the city that summer.
For both Matisse and Signac, their choice of subject allowed them to envision the promise of a new, idealised way life, creating a form of modern day allegorical painting that would inspire and challenge their viewers. For Paul Gauguin, the theme offered something more profound and spiritual – in his painting D'où venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous? (1897-1898), for example, he examined the meaning and purpose of life, presenting an enigmatic meditation on destiny on a canvas that stretches over three and a half metres wide. Read from right to left in a continuous progression, the picture presents an allegory of life and death, playing out in an idyllic setting of the Tahitian forest, where the figures’ movements and interactions are laced with hidden meaning and mystery. Gauguin’s paintings from Tahiti were an important influence on André Derain through the opening years of the twentieth century, prompting him to paint his own dynamic vision of an enigmatic cast of characters energetically cavorting in a forest glade in L’âge d’or (1905), the highly stylised Divisionist picture pulsating with colour and energy. Derain followed this shortly afterwards with Le Danse (1906), another fantastical vision of a dream-like arcadia, which was seen as a repost to the grand statement Matisse had made in Le Bonheur de vivre.
Deftly attuned to the artistic zeitgeist, Kandinsky would have been well aware of the ongoing debates and ideas that were swirling through the avant-garde, and the repeated engagement with the concept of the Golden Age. His time in Paris allowed him to deepen his understanding and appreciation of the topic even further, experiencing not only the forceful power of some of these works first-hand, but also to reflect on the lineage of the theme, and the manner in which the subject had progressed and developed through the innovations of each artist’s individual response. In 1907, Kandinsky challenged himself to follow their lead, and offer his own take on the theme in a new, grandly scaled painting. Like Signac, Gauguin, Derain and Matisse before him, Kandinsky sought to convey a romantic utopian vision that delved into the multifaceted nature of human existence. The result was Das bunte Leben, a work that would allow Kandinsky to stake his own claim to a place within the pantheon of great modern masters, engaging directly with this striking subject that continued to grip the most daring painters of the avant-garde.
Folklore and Fantasy
As he embarked on this grand composition, Kandinsky sought to translate the theme through his own visionary pictorial language, creating a work that responded to these recent painterly explorations, while remaining rooted in his own artistic identity. To this end, he turned to the folkloric traditions of his native Russia for inspiration, particularly the epic, poetic songs known as byliny, exploring characters rooted in a world of knights and lovers, magical beings, both sinister and benevolent, and classic heroes who embodied courage, strength and valour. Drawing on a range of legends and stories that were ingrained in his imagination and memory, Kandinsky’s motifs Russes reveal the strength of the ties that bound the artist to his homeland, which he described as “the tuning fork of my painting” (“Reminiscences,” 1913; in K.C. Lindsay and P. Vergo, Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art, New York, 1994, p. 382).
When Kandinsky arrived in Paris in 1906, he eagerly discovered there was a strong reciprocal interest among Parisian audiences for modern Russian art. A landmark exhibition staged that autumn further increased the enthusiasm for les arts Russe – organised by the impresario Serge Diaghilev, and featuring over 700 works of art, it set out to promote and position Russian culture on a European stage, culminating in a grand celebration of the recent innovations of the so-called Silver Age. In the introduction of the exhibition’s dedicated catalogue, Diaghilev explained his approach and goals: “This exhibition offers an overview of our art’s development as viewed through a modern lens. It features all the elements that have directly shaped the contemporary spirit of our country. It presents a faithful portrait of the Russian art scene today, characterised by its genuine vitality, its respectful admiration for the past, and its ardent faith in the future” (Exposition de l'art Russe, Salon d’Automne, Paris, 1906, p. 7).
The exhibition was met with critical and popular acclaim in Paris. Though he was exhibiting in a different section of the Salon d’Automne that year, independently of the Exposition de l’art Russe, Kandinsky is known to have visited Diaghilev’s show several times, and may have been inspired to delve into these themes with a renewed intensity in his own work as a result. Over the ensuing months, a flurry of new compositions on Russian themes emerged, marking the high-point of his early paintings. Rather than focusing on single stories or specific scenes from well-known tales, Kandinsky increasingly combined elements and iconography from multiple different narratives in his compositions, blending storylines and characters to conjure an overall atmosphere of mystical, timeless magic. As he later explained, with these works “I tried, by lines and by distribution of mottled points of colour, to express the musical spirit of Russia. Other pictures of that period reflected the contradictions, and later the eccentricities of Russia” (letter to W. Grohmann, 12 October 1924; quoted in W. Grohmann, Wassily Kandinsky: Life and Work, London, 1959, p. 51).
A Romantic Arcadia
These ideas found their full expression in Das bunte Leben, resulting in an extraordinary, romantic narrative painting constructed around intriguing vignettes that blended his knowledge and memories of these stories and legends with a new sense of imagination. The iconography of the painting is deliberately mysterious – a bustling crowd of people of all ages and backgrounds gather together in a bucolic, rural setting. The multitude of diverse characters – ranging from pilgrims and peasants, to saintly figures and regal, courtly characters – are distributed across the canvas in clusters, with no clear narrative thread uniting them together.
Kandinsky structures the composition into clear bands of action, leading the eye through successive layers from one group to the other, towards the walled city perched on the hill in the distance. Here, the brightly coloured domes, roofs and towers within the walled citadel rise upwards, the individual character of the buildings picked out in short strokes of pigment, which offer a contrasting note to the elongated curving strokes that sweep across the hillside. At ground level, a colourful wooden church is glimpsed through the trees, anchoring the landscape in a distinctly Russian setting. Among the tapestry of figures that fill the landscape, certain details may be tied to specific tales and legends. In the tree canopy, for example, the house of the witch Baba Yaga appears amid the foliage, balanced precariously on chicken feet and tilting slightly towards the picture plane, suggesting it is on the move. In the centre of the picture, Kandinsky appears to include two saints, the figures of Boris and Gleb, canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1015. Often shown standing together, side-by-side, the brothers were a common subject for icon painters through the centuries.
In contrast, other figures are more emblematic – the elegant mother cradling her child, the weary traveller, with a long white beard guided by his walking stick and bearing a heavy pack, the monk dressed in dark robes adorned with skulls and the beggar at his feet. As we move through the successive layers of the canvas, Kandinsky simplifies the details of his figures as they reduce in size, so that we are forced to discern their character through just a handful of subtle details. For example, the peaceful rower that cuts through the water is delineated in just a few short strokes of colour, yet we are able to detect the energy required to propel the boat forward; similarly, a boy and girl chase one another through the fields directly below the walled town, their bodies filled with a spontaneous sense of joy, so that we can almost hear the hoots of laughter from them.
In the middle-ground, a crowd comes together in a clash of spears at the water’s edge, the conflict at odds with the festive atmosphere at the front of the scene, where people eat, laugh and mingle as they are serenaded by the figure playing a pipe. This sense of peace is further disrupted by the crowd of men in the middle of the composition, where a series of arguments appear to have broken out beneath the trees, the gestures of the various characters suggesting they are locked in increasingly more disastrous and dangerous levels of disagreement. On one side, a character throws his hands up in the air in frustration as he shouts at his companion, while another man brandishes a dagger and appears to lunge towards his adversary, as if to strike him. At the edge of this group, Kandinsky draws our attention to the archer, who notches his arrow and takes aim at the small, innocent squirrel perched on the branches above, watching the action unfold.
The knight, meanwhile, glimpsed between the trees as he raises his sword in the air, is another iteration of the artist’s famed horse and rider motif, which Kandinsky had first explored in the opening years of the century. A symbol for the artistic move beyond realistic representation, the character would later become the iconic emblem of the Blaue Reiter group Kandinsky founded in Munich alongside Franz Marc. Here, the knight appears to charge forwards, his steed picking up its front hooves as it rears slightly, the longer hair of the horse’s legs captured in a flick of paint that echoes their naturally feathered appearance. The knight is clad in layers of armour, the dome of his helmet described in dashes of pigment, while a sheet of chainmail drapes down his back, its interlocking surface picked out in small touches of blue. Though seemingly dressed for battle, he moves away from the skirmishes glimpsed elsewhere within the scene and steers his horse through the trees towards a destination, and a future, unknown.
Following his trajectory through the trees, the viewer is drawn towards the pair of courtly lovers partially concealed from the other revellers behind one of the trunks, as they share a tender, intimate exchange. The woman gazes up at her paramour, her arms resting on his shoulders as she tilts her chin up for a kiss, the palpable sense of longing and passion infusing their forms with a melancholic tension. They are so wrapped up in one another, they appear oblivious to the fact that just behind them, a funeral procession makes its way along the track at the edge of the cemetery, monks in decorative robes followed by coffin-bearers and mourners, creating a jarring juxtaposition that emphasises the coexistence of love and death in a single moment.
Such symbolic allusions and essential dichotomies are rife throughout the painting – the young contrasted with the old, the peaceful with the violent, despair and happiness, poverty and wealth, love and loss, all coexisting in the same moment, in the same space, in the same lifetime. At the same time, one detail appears to be a highly personal addition by the artist, rooted in the precise moment of the painting’s creation – the cat in the lower right corner of the painting is most likely a portrait of Kandinsky and Münter’s beloved pet Waske, who appears in a number of photographs from their time together in Paris.
Colour Set Free
In the compositions devoted to les motifs Russes from the year 1906-1907, Kandinsky reached the most important stylistic and technical innovations of his early career, the invented imagery and fantastical romantic scenes providing a path to the freer use of colour and form. In Das bunte Leben, Kandinsky eschews contour lines, delineating the scene through a deftly placed network of mosaic-like particles of resplendent colour. Broadening his brushstrokes to the point where each mark takes on an autonomous formal function of its own, the independent strokes coalesce and shift as they describe the rich cast of characters and the otherworldly setting they occupy. From small dots and fluid dashes, to elongated curving strokes and block-like elements, Kandinsky varies his facture to individualise his various characters, from the intricate ornamentation and patterning of their costumes, to the particulars of their features, and the essential energies of their physicality.
Against the dark, black ground, the bright touches of pigment stand out and achieve a greater luminosity, almost pulsing before the eye, a feature that accentuates the dreamlike setting of the scene. As Kandinsky noted, black was “externally the most toneless colour, against which all other colours, even the weakest, sound stronger and more precise” (quoted in J. Hahl-Koch, Kandinsky, London, 1993, p. 92). In Das bunte Leben, he uses a mixture of opaque gouaches and tempera which vary in intensity and depth, ranging from soft pastels to sonorous, bright reds and vibrant cobalt blues. By this stage of his career, Kandinsky was not interested in the optical mixing advocated by the Neo-Impressionists and the use of complementary colours, but rather the power of pure pigment, intuitively modulated and applied, guided by the artist’s eye and inner spirit. This leads to unexpected contrasts, such as the aged traveller’s mint green beard, the almost claret-coloured flush of the reveller’s cheeks, and the deep purple clouds in the distance, which do not seem to suggest a storm, but rather the soft play of light as the sun sets.
These techniques reveal the bold, highly experimental way of seeing that Kandinsky was exploring at this time. By allowing his strokes of pure pigment to play an independent and autonomous role in this way, Kandinsky reached a deeper understanding of colour’s expressive and structural potential, simplifying and breaking his subjects down into an abstracted interplay of pigment alone. This break-through marked a crucial stepping stone on the artist’s creative path – this new freedom of colour would take root and find bold expression in his Murnau landscapes the following year, and continue to evolve, allowing him to reach pure abstraction in his paintings.
A Bold Artistic Statement
Kandinsky had strong ambitions for Das bunte Leben from its very inception. The scale of the painting, executed on the largest canvas the artist had completed to this date which he had specially ordered for the purpose, combined with the visionary, philosophical subject matter that plays out within the landscape, clearly indicate that he viewed it as a statement piece that would catch the attention of important critics and fellow artists.
The painting made its public debut at the Union Internationale des Beaux-Arts et des Lettres in Angers in May of 1907, as part of a major showcase of Kandinsky’s work. Featuring over a hundred artworks across all media, the section dedicated solely to his oeuvre was a watershed moment in his career, positioning him among the leading figures of the avant-garde. In his review of the exhibition, the chief critic of Les Tendences Nouvelles, Gérome-Maësse, remarked upon the extraordinary power of Kandinsky’s dynamic oeuvre, which was arranged on a single wall. “…the works of Kandinsky unfailingly entice the spectator. They intrigue him, then they captivate him…,” he wrote. “The painting which occupies our attention [almost certainly Das bunte Leben] is expressive, seductive, aggressive and charming, sometimes exaggerated, volatile and often disquieting, but it absorbs us and stirs our emotions” (“Le Musée du Peuple” in Les Tendances Nouvelles, no. 30, May 1907, pp. 560-561 ; quoted in J.D. Fineberg, Kandinsky in Paris 1906-1907, Ann Arbor, 1984, p. 71). From there, Kandinsky sent Das bunte Leben to the Salon d’Automne in Paris, which opened at the Grand Palais in October 1907, where it would be seen by all of the great critics and names of the artworld.
Das bunte Leben was subsequently returned to Kandinsky, and appears to have remained with him until it was acquired by Herwarth Walden’s Galerie der Sturm. Walden was a key figure within the German avant-garde at this time, a forward-thinking publisher, critic and gallerist who championed the daring work of the Expressionists, the Cubists and the Futurists. Writing to Kandinsky on 15 September 1912, he proclaimed “I consider… you to be the most important European phenomenon of the present” (quoted in Expressionists: Kandinsky, Münter and The Blue Rider, exh. cat., Tate, London, 2024, p. 186). The painting was included in the pivotal exhibition Kandinsky Kollektiv-Ausstellung in October 1912, which subsequently travelled to a host of cities in the years preceding the First World War, including Rotterdam, Brussels, Hamburg, Frankfurt and Munich; it also featured in the important album of the artist’s work, Kandinsky, 1901-1913, compiled and published under the Der Sturm imprint in 1913.
The Lewenstein Collection
In November 1927, Das bunte Leben was acquired by the Jewish businessman and collector Emanuel Albert Lewenstein and his wife, Hedwig Lewenstein-Weyermann. Director of the family firm, which specialised in sewing machines, Emanuel was among a group of forward-looking collectors of modern art in Amsterdam during the inter-war years, building a diverse collection that hung in the family home at 37 De Lairessestraat. Emanuel’s father, Adolph, had established the A. Lewenstein Naaimachines company in Amsterdam in 1868 for the purpose of selling and manufacturing sewing machines. Within a few years, the Lewenstein brand had become a household name in the Netherlands, renowned for their machines’ durability and stylish designs.
Emanuel followed his father into the family business and took on the role of director at the Lewenstein company, which subsequently became known as N.V. Amsterdamse Naaimachinehandel. Alongside his business acumen, Emanuel harboured a keen appreciation for art, a passion that was most likely inspired by his parents – he is believed to have inherited an impressive group of Rembrandt prints from his father. Emanuel initially focused on acquiring artworks by Dutch contemporary artists, such as Jozef Israëls, Jan Toorop,and Jan Sluyters, some of whom he knew personally. This was complemented by a growing interest in French modernism and the German avant-garde, fuelled by his maternal cousin, the artist and photographer Paul Citroen, who had previously worked with Walden at the Galerie Der Sturm in Berlin.
Emanuel purchased works by Jean Metzinger, Oskar Kokoschka and Odilon Redon from Citroen through the 1920s, many of which had previously passed through Walden’s gallery. Das bunte Leben was the second painting by Kandinsky that the Lewensteins purchased from Citroen, following their acquisition of Bild mit Häusern (1909) four years prior. After Emanuel’s death in 1930, the couple’s art collection passed into the sole ownership of Hedwig, who organised for several pieces, including Das bunte Leben, to be placed on loan to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Upon Hedwig’s passing in 1937, her will requested that the family art collection be equally divided and distributed between the couple’s two children – Robert Gotschalk Lewenstein and Wilhelmine Helene Lewenstein.
However, there is no indication that this division ever took place. Wilhelmine left Amsterdam shortly after her mother’s death, emigrating with her husband to Mozambique; around the same time, Robert’s marriage to the German actress Irma Klein broke down and the couple separated in late 1938. Robert subsequently resigned from his position at the Lewenstein company and moved to Vence in the South of France with his new partner, Shirley Goodman. While both Robert and Wilhelmine were living abroad when War broke out, their incomes were frozen and their shares in the Lewenstein company confiscated and forcibly sold following the Aryanisation of the company. Several members of the extended Lewenstein family perished in the concentration camps, including Robert and Wilhelmine’s uncle Siegfried, and aunts Rosa and Julie.
The war also resulted in the loss of the family’s art collection. In October 1940, just five months after the German invasion of the Netherlands, works from the Lewenstein collection were offered for sale at the Amsterdam auction house Frederik Muller & Cie, under the property title “Estate of L…., Amsterdam.” It remains unknown under whose direction these works came to market, or who benefited from the proceeds. Kandinsky’s Das bunte Leben was among the lots on offer, having been removed from the Stedelijk the previous month on an unidentified person’s instructions and handed over to the art dealer Abraham Querido. The painting was purchased from Frederik Muller & Cie by Salomon B. Slijper for 250 Dutch guilders, who returned the painting to the Stedelijk Museum almost immediately for safe-keeping. It was later sold by his widow to the Bayerische Landesbank in 1972, who placed it on long-term loan to the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich, where it hung for almost five decades.
After the war, Robert and Wilhelmine attempted to uncover what had happened to their parents’ art collection, with Wilhelmine specifically searching for information relating to Kandinsky’s Das bunte Leben. Following years of diligent research and legal action by the Lewenstein heirs, Das bunte Leben was successfully restituted to the family in 2023 from the Bayerische Landesbank.