Wassily Kandinsky

Sources: MoMA: Picture with an Archer, MoMA: White – Soft and Hard, MoMA: Church at Murnau, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza: Murnau: Top of the Johannisstrasse, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: Watercolors by Kandinsky, MoMA: opaque watercolor study, and Guggenheim: Colored Sticks in varnished tempera.

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  Oil paint

  Picture with an Archer (1909) is oil on canvas, filling a partly recognizable landscape with intense color. Church at Murnau (1909) instead uses oil on board. In White – Soft and Hard (March 1932), Kandinsky combined oil with gouache on canvas, setting sharply defined geometric elements against softer forms.

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  Watercolor paint

  Paper supported Kandinsky’s watercolors and preparatory studies, including works documented by the Guggenheim. The absorbent sheet carries transparent washes and drawn lines, making these works distinct from the oil paintings on canvas, cardboard, wood, and glass documented in museum collections.

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  Gouache paint

  MoMA identifies gouache alongside oil in White – Soft and Hard (1932). Its collection also describes the opaque water-based passages in Study for Painting with White Form as “opaque watercolor,” a related museum term. Neither label makes the accompanying ink or pencil a separate paint medium.

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  Traditional tempera

  Colored Sticks (1928) is varnished tempera on paperboard, while Green Accent (November 1935) combines tempera with oil on canvas. The Guggenheim's records do not specify an egg binder, so “tempera” should not be narrowed to egg tempera for these works.

Sources: MoMA: Picture with an Archer, MoMA: Church at Murnau, MoMA: oil and gouache in White – Soft and Hard, MoMA: Watercolor No. 14, MoMA: opaque watercolor study, Guggenheim: varnished tempera in Colored Sticks, and Guggenheim: Green Accent.

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  Canvas

  MoMA records Kandinsky’s Picture with an Archer (1909) as oil on canvas. The painting combines a recognizable rider and landscape with the increasingly abstracted forms of his Murnau period. Canvas is the support for this finished composition, while several contemporaneous watercolor studies and painted panels use other supports.

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  Paper

  Paper supported Kandinsky’s watercolors and preparatory studies. The Guggenheim’s collection and exhibition records document his watercolor practice, in which the absorbent sheet carries transparent washes and drawn lines. These works show a portable medium distinct from the oil paintings he made on canvas and cardboard.

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  Cardboard

  Kandinsky used cardboard for oil paintings such as Untitled Improvisation III, which LACMA catalogs as oil on cardboard, and Murnau: Top of the Johannisstrasse, cataloged by the Thyssen-Bornemisza as oil on cardboard. These collection records document a rigid support for finished landscapes and abstract compositions.

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  Wood

  MoMA catalogs Kandinsky’s Church at Murnau as oil on wood, documenting a painted wooden support in his early Murnau-period landscapes. The panel supports a compact view of the town and church, distinct from the larger oil canvases and the watercolor studies made on paper.

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  Glass

  Kandinsky made reverse paintings on glass after encountering the Bavarian Hinterglas tradition. In this technique he painted on the pane’s reverse and viewed the image through the glass, so the transparent support also determined the order of execution. Conservation research on his early glass paintings documents their layered structure and fragile materials.

Sources: MoMA: Picture with an Archer, MoMA: Church at Murnau, LACMA: Untitled Improvisation III, oil on cardboard, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza: Murnau: Top of the Johannisstrasse, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: Watercolors by Kandinsky, Heritage Science: investigation of Kandinsky’s reverse glass paintings.