Improvisation 6 (African)

Improvisation 6 (German: 'Improvisation 6 [Afrikanisches]') is an early near-abstract painting by Wassily Kandinsky, made in 1909 during the years he was moving away from representational art toward pure abstraction. It belongs to his 'Improvisations' series — works that Kandinsky described as largely spontaneous expressions of an inner, emotional character. The 'African' subtitle reflects impressions drawn from the artist's travels in Tunisia with Gabriele Münter, part of the wider interest of the Blaue Reiter circle in non-Western and folk art as sources of authentic, expressive form. Loosely brushed robed figures dissolve into vivid, freely handled passages of color, so that subject and pattern begin to merge. The painting is held at the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich as part of the Gabriele Münter Foundation.