In the manner of Wassily Kandinsky
Russian, 1866–1944
Improvisation: Electric Motor, 2026
Oil on canvas
150 × 200 cm
Never painted.
Commissioned for the collection, 2026.
PAB 2026.15.5
Rings of blue and green nest inside one another at the top left, a faint spiral unwinds beside them, and at their centre sits one tiny red dot. That is the motor. Around it the rest of the picture keeps busy, triangles and circles going about their business, but the rings hardly seem to turn. Kandinsky loved a machine. This one would have puzzled him: all that power, and no sound.
The brief
An abstract composition of nested circles in cool blues and greens with a faint smooth spiral, one tiny red dot, almost silent. Early twentieth-century abstract oil painting, floating circles, wedges, arcs and thin black lines in a dynamic composition, primary reds, yellows and blues against pale grounds, geometric forms in tension with free painterly marks, musical rhythm and movement, matte oil surface. Museum photograph of the oil painting, flat even lighting, no frame, no text, no wall, no floor, cropped to the canvas edge.
Written to the house rules. The painter's name does not appear.
Take it home
The painting on this room's wall, at its own proportions, nothing written on it.
