Motley life Vasily Kandinsky (1866-1944)

Description of Wassily Kandinsky’s painting "Motley Life"

The Motley Life (La Vie melangee) is a painting by Wassily Kandinsky, one of the founders of abstractionism. After being purchased by the Bavarian State Bank, the painting has been on display in the city’s Lenbachhaus Gallery in Munich since 1972.

Many art historians agree that "Motley Life" is considered one of the key works of the artist. It is a vivid hymn to Russian traditions - in contrast to the general desire of the tsar and the Russian elite to embrace Western culture.

In 2017, it was revealed that the Kandinsky painting belonged to the Dutch Jewish Levenshtein family and had been illegally seized in 1940 after the German army occupied the Netherlands - a case of illegal Nazi looting. An application for restitution has now been filed in a U.S. court.

Wassily Kandinsky finished his group of colored drawings in Paris in 1907 with the very work "The Colorful Life". The love of bright life in the work of the young artist is combined with the influence of folk art. People in their bright costumes run like colorful living pictures on two legs.

Kandinsky shows here what constitutes human existence. A Russian matron takes a bite of an apple, a woman searching for tones on her flute. A couple of newlyweds want to kiss, a father-in-law shows his cross, and an old traveler is highlighted by his unexpectedly green beard. High above the clouds is a castle. It is absolutely impossible to understand from this painting how Wassily Kandinsky came from his objective early work to his abstractions, with which he revolutionized art history.