Murnau with a Church by Wassily Kandinsky

Murnau with a Church and Mountain Landscape with Church are two fairly similar artworks from Wassily Kandinsky which captures a landscape scene within a very abstract style. He would vary his level of abstraction across his career, but this particular balance has proven particularly popular with the public.

Kandinsky transforms the original landscape view into something entirely contemporary and somewhat abstract through his use of colour and reduced detail. We find tones of purple and orange that likely would not have been there at the time, but were added by the artist in order to create a more exciting and vibrant version of reality. When working in abstract worlds, one can diverge in directions of your choosing, but it is important to leave enough connection to the original content so that the viewer can still recognise what has been painted. As artists move further and further into the abstract world, this connection becomes less and less clear. You might take the examples of Miro and Mondrian, for example, who visually developed over time before reducing their work to simple geometric shapes.

Murnau is a picturesque district in Bavaria, Germany. Kandinsky produced a number of his abstract scenes here and loved to work with the rolling hills of this region. Gustav Klimt was an Austrian artist who also produced some stunning contemporary landscape scenes around the early 20th century, such as Church in Cassone, Slope in a Forest on Attersee Lake and Church in Unterach on Attersee. They would both become better known for their work in other genres, and many who only take a fleeting interest in their career will be completely unaware of the stunning landscape paintings that they produced. These have also proven popular as print reproductions for the general public.

The original painting can be found in the collection of The Städtische Galerie in Munich. Head to this fantastic city to find many more famous German artists, as well as a number who, like Kandinsky, came from abroad to leave their mark. Munich itself holds a great number of Kandinsky paintings, particularly some of his lesser known ones and so it is a great way to discover a wider breadth of his career that you may not have been aware of previously. Some of the other artists that you can expect to come across within the various museums and galleries dotted around this German city include the likes of Franz Marc, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Lucas Cranach and also Paul Klee. Some of Kandinsky's most famous artworks have been dispersed across the world, such as in the US and UK.