KANDINSKY
Improvisation No. 30
is not absolutely pure, in that it contains many more or less obvious suggestions of familiar forms and objects.
Some workmen who happened to be handling the painting, referred to it as the “War Picture,” and many casual observers insist it is an impression of war or of a battle field.
This is because two cannon are quite plain in the lower right-hand corner, and the two oblong blue masses projecting from the cannons’ mouths would seem to be the smoke of the discharges.
Then, too, the seeming cataclysmic effect, the suggestion of a helmet, a tottering tower, banners, aerial flashes or fireworks, all accentuate the impression of conflict and explosions.
If one looks long enough in this mood it is not difficult to read into the canvas all sorts of interpretations of a warlike character.
Yet the painting was “improvised”—composed with no direct intention of suggesting war.
In his own personal note book wherein he keeps a record of all his work, Kandinsky identifies the picture by a hasty pencil sketch and the words, “Blue Splashes,” or “Masses,” and “Cannons.”