Couple's Ride: Meaning

Painting by Wassily Kandinsky, considered one of the most beautiful works created during his post-impressionist period, created when the artist would have been around forty years old.

Considering the beginning of the 20th century, this painting was also fundamental for the first signs of abstract art that were starting to appear in the work of this innovative artist.

Some forget that, although it was created at the beginning of his career, he started this profession quite late due to his previous work as a lawyer.

It was, therefore, still quite early in his artistic development.

In the foreground, we see a couple riding a horse. The bustling urban landscape, with traditional Russian architecture reaching the skies, is enchanting, in fact, it is the style used by Kandinsky with his small brushstrokes of paint, which makes this work so fascinating.

Around the couple of horsemen are some fine and elegant birches, and behind them a scene composed of a wide river and an urban landscape with many domes and colorful roofs, reminiscent of the grandeur of Moscow, a city that had a special place in Kandinsky's heart.

Here he uses a divisionist method of Georges Seurat that allows the color to mix freely in the viewer's eyes and not on the painter's palette.

He is building the space with small points, lines, and brushstrokes of color that essentially merge the three figures into a single form.

He then does the same with the trees, giving a similar sensation to Christmas lights, where each point of the trees is lit, which beautifully contrasts with the dark trunk and branches.

At this point, Kandinsky was using Russian influences in much of his work and would do so for several years.

It was only later that his travels abroad brought new ideas that led him in different directions.

The orange and red leaves that fell to the ground also increase the magical appeal of the scene.

There is a visual contrast between the bright and inviting city on the other side of the river and the solitary and more intimate space hidden by the trees where the lovers are on horseback, as if they were hiding their love, or, the city with its lights and promises of entertainment and joy do not attract them because they have already found heaven on earth in each other's arms.

The motive, the scene, and the way it was painted make it seem like a scene from a fairy tale, like the stories told by his aunt during his childhood in Moscow.

But the story has a bizarre detail: the painting was created during a period of great change in art and society.

Couple's Ride is a work that reflects this change and continues to inspire artists and art lovers to this day.

Title: Couple's Ride

Author: Wassily Kandinsky

Year: 1906

Technique - Oil on canvas - Dimension (55.0 × 50.5 cm)

Location: Municipal Gallery Lenbachhaus, Munich (Germany)