Munich, North Cemetery

Wassily Kandinsky's 'Munich, North Cemetery' (1903) depicts the Nordfriedhof — the large cemetery on Munich's northern edge that was one of the city's significant green spaces as well as its burial ground for prominent citizens. The cemetery as a landscape subject carried obvious symbolic resonances, and Kandinsky's engagement with this specific Munich location combined his urban documentation practice with the potential for the deeper meditation on mortality and nature that the cemetery landscape offered.

Kandinsky renders the North Cemetery with his characteristic decorative approach — the cemetery's specific landscape elements (the monuments, trees, pathways, and the quality of the light within this particular space) depicted through his bold simplification and color emphasis. His handling creates the specific atmosphere of the cemetery landscape within his developing style. The relationship between the natural and the funerary elements of the space creates the composition's thematic content.