Wassily Kandinsky's Two Riders In Front Of Red

Wassily Kandinsky was a Russian artist who is most commonly associated with the art movement Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider), so named because of their love of horses and beliefs that colors could affect real change on a person’s soul. These artists experimented often with color to see what effects they could affect in their viewers; however, there are only seven colors used in his woodblock print Two Riders in Front of Red. Yet, in a way only Kandinsky can seem to achieve, these colors have been made deep and vibrant as to affect a viewer in the way that only Kandinsky would want. Another unique detail of Two Riders in Front of Red is the fact that Kandinsky chose to not line up some colors with their clearly defined black outlines. Kandinsky’s

The rider and horse that are placed centrally are blue and yellow spotted, respectively. There is also a tree centrally located which has scant white, blue, yellow, and red fruit growing on its branches, which seem to be moving towards the left edge of the print. Encompassing the central figures is an imperfect semi-circle of white. The horse and rider on the right edge of the print are white and black respectively, with what appears to be a blue bridle on the back of the horse on which the rider is sitting. Behind these figures is another tree, which has a purple trunk and leaves as well as some green leaves and black fruit. Both horses walk along a purple ground which is punctuated by some black streaks which could be interpreted as uneven soil. Under the ground is a thick black line and more red ink, completing the bottom of the print. After looking at the print for an extended period of time, it becomes obvious that some of the colors are not made by pure pigments, but by the mixing of colors as they are layered on top of each other with various stamps of the woodblock. It appears that the only true pigments that Kandinsky used were red, yellow, black, and blue. The mixing of all of these colors create the other colors in the image e.g. green and

Some of these “mistakes” can be seen on the fruit of the central tree, the central horse and the ground below it, the rightmost horse and the rightmost tree. In all of these places, save the rightmost tree, we can see where the thick black lines are supposed to contain the colored pigments, yet the colors are not contained within the black lines. It could be said that this is because Kandinsky was not trained in the art of the woodblock print, and therefore would produce a sloppy product, but it is very clear that these issues are intentional as no shifting of the black outlines or any of the other colored piece would result in a perfectly lined up image. However, if we shift the blue, pigment, which makes the purple fruit on the central tree, down and to the left so that it fits in the ascribed black outline, the blue pigment which makes up the ground and the right tree would be skewed, which would make the focus of the painting Kandinsky’s inability to line up his prints rather than slight misplacements which emphasize color. On the rightmost tree we can see a small line where the red pigment which the blue is placed on top of to create purple does not line up with the edge of the yellow pigment, which was added on top of the blue to make green. It’s very clearly a mistake because the uppermost edge of the tree is straight, and thus