Munich

Munich, painted in 1901 and held at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, is one of Kandinsky's earliest surviving oils—a city view of Munich from his student years at the academy there. Kandinsky arrived in Munich in 1896, initially to study with Anton Ažbé, then later with Franz von Stuck. In 1901 he was still working in a relatively conventional, Post-Impressionist mode, his later revolutionary abstraction not yet hinted at in street scenes like this. The Guggenheim holds the world's largest collection of Kandinsky's work, making this early urban view an important document of his formation as a painter.

The 1901 Munich cityscape shows Kandinsky working in a Post-Impressionist manner derived from his exposure to Monet's colour and Ažbé's drawing instruction. Paint is applied with short, varied strokes that capture urban atmosphere rather than architectural precision. The palette is more conventional than his later work—warm ochres and browns, grey-blue skies.