Object Lessons Kandinsky’s mysterious exploration of color and form

What to know: Wassily Kandinsky (1886-1944), a Russian painter and art theorist, was pivotal in the move towards abstraction in Western art and is best known for his exploration of the transcendent power of color and form. He painted “The Waterfall” during a period of artistic transition, in which his naturalist landscapes transformed into abstract compositions. Inspired by the German countryside near Munich, Kandinsky playfully distorts the landscape’s natural forms into a fantastical scene.

From the expert: “Kandinsky’s depiction of multicolored foliage surrounding a waterfall is more mysterious than it might at first appear,” says Keely Orgeman, the Seymour H. Knox, Jr. Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Yale University Art Gallery. “He made related compositions during this period that portrayed robed figures in apocalyptic scenes. Here, in what seems instead to be a vision of paradise, a standing figure with a brown head-covering and another figure with an orange one can be barely discerned on the right side of the waterfall, their robes cascading alongside it.”