Untitled Improvisation III

© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
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Untitled Improvisation III

Russia, 1914
Paintings
Oil on cardboard
25 1/2 × 19 3/4 in. (64.77 × 50.17 cm)
Museum acquisition by exchange from the David E. Bright Bequest (M.85.151)
Modern Art
Currently on public view:
Broad Contemporary Art Museum, floor 3

Since gallery displays may change often, please contact us before you visit to make certain this item is on view.

Label

Wassily Kandinsky was one of the first artists to experiment with complete abstraction by painting without reference to recognizable objects from the real world....
Wassily Kandinsky was one of the first artists to experiment with complete abstraction by painting without reference to recognizable objects from the real world. Kandinsky wanted to free the viewer from the visual distraction of seeing a painting, in order to enable them to feel it instead. He considered his paintings analogous to music, and used color and form to elicit the sensations aroused through vibration, pitch, and the duration of sound. Beginning in 1909, he painted a series of works he called “improvisations,” which he described as “chiefly unconscious, for the most part suddenly arising expressions of events of an inner character.”

This painting, once owned by the artist’s partner and fellow painter, Gabriele Münter, was later acquired by Hans Hofmann, a German painter who brought it to the United States when he emigrated in 1932. Hofmann’s own teaching on abstraction was highly influential to the development of Abstract Expressionism in the United States.

Wall label, 2021.
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Bibliography

  • Powell III, Earl A., Robert Winter, and Stephanie Barron. The Robert O. Anderson Building. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1986.
  • Price, Lorna.  Masterpieces from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  Los Angeles:  Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1988.
  • Powell III, Earl A., Robert Winter, and Stephanie Barron. The Robert O. Anderson Building. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1986.
  • Price, Lorna.  Masterpieces from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  Los Angeles:  Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1988.
  • Los Angeles County Museum of Art Members' Calendar 1990.  vol. 27-28, no. 12-1 (December, 1989-January, 1991).
  • Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  New York: Thames and Hudson, 2003.
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