Blue Segment by Wassily Kandinsky

Blue Segment is a vibrant painting by Wassily Kandinsky from 1921. It featured in a recent Tate Exhbition of the artist's work, as part of a room which discussed his life in the early 1920s.

This is a busy composition, even by Kandinsky's standards. There are swirls right across the canvas, circles, lines, triangles and many more shapes to attract your attention. The palette is also particularly varied, with blues, yellows, greens and pinks in multiple tones to increase the visual impact of Blue Segment. One can spend an eternity trying to decipher the objects delivered in this painting, due to the high level of abstraction used by the artist. He varied his use of form over his career, with some periods of his work being exceptionally difficult to understand unless you are particularly well acquainted with the artist. Personally i see perhaps a city skyline to the right hand side, with a sun placed to its left. There is also what appears to be a pair of eyes with eye lashes at the bottom of the painting, but these are ideas without any true confidence.

The artist would have planned this piece fairly carefully, using a series of drawings that would slowly layer on more and more detail. He could not have created something of this complexity without prior planning. To some this abstract scene may look entirely spontaneous, but in fact everything was there for a reason and styled in a certain way in order to complete the final look. He again made use of clear tones of colour for bold shapes, and then other regions that use blends of colour which signify other types of objects. The original artwork is believed to be owned by the The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York City, a notable art institution that holds a number of artworks from Kandinsky, across a variety of different mediums, including work with oils, such as this one, as well as watercolours and drawings. They remain one of the best locations to visit for followers of his work, with several others available across in Europe too.

"...Blue Segment 1921, with its combination of different forms, shows Kandinsky's art at a pivotal moment. Like many of his earlier works, the title focuses on just one section of the painting, in this case the blue segment rather like a crescent moon..."

Tate Exhibition