Birth of a Painting

Original program from the 1911 concert

Etta Werndorff, pianist

Kandinsky's sketch of the Concert, 2 January 1911

Wassily Kandinsky: Impression III [Konzert], 1911

Immediately after attending the January 2nd Schoenberg concert in Munich in 1911, Kandinsky made the sketch shown above on the left.  Note that he indicated certain colors in the sketch that he retained in the final work which was completed only a couple of days later.  "Schw[arz]" = black for the piano; "gelb" = yellow for a mass or large space on the lower right; and "w[eiß]" = white for the two posts and the dress of the pianist, Etta Werndorff (see Schoenberg's portrait of Werndorff (above right) to imagine the "real" performer into the Kandinsky sketch).  In both sketch and painting, the shapes of the audience and pianist ~ upside-down U-shapes all seeming to lean in toward the source of the music ~ appear to reflect the dominating shape of the piano lid.  In the painting, the figures in the sketch have all been shifted up and to the left, leaving  the large mass of yellow below the diagonal on the lower right.  It appears (to this amateur art-lover, at any rate) that the triangular "crowding" of the concert in this way gives the impression of extreme concentration ~ a kind of "leaning in" together.

It is interesting to contemplate both the sketch and painting while listening to some of the music Kandinsky heard here for the first time.  Go here for a performance by Glenn Gould of the Three Piano Pieces.