Small Worlds VII (Kleine Welten VII)

Vasily Kandinsky created this lithograph as he was moving away from figuration and toward using a complex vocabulary of nonobjective forms and colors to express spiritual content. Here, curving arabesque lines and geometric shapes suggest organic or kinetic forces interacting to create a miniature universe, as suggested by the work’s title, Small Worlds.

The work comes from a portfolio Kandinsky published that was meant to highlight the unique qualities of different printmaking processes. Lithography appealed to him because it could produce a potentially limitless number of impressions—something the artist believed made it particularly modern and democratic.