Rain Landscape 1911

Wassily Kandinsky made this Rain Landscape with watercolor, and you can really see that process at play. The colors aren't blended so much as layered, giving a sense of depth without obscuring the paper beneath. There's a kind of push and pull in the textures, like he's building the image up in layers, letting each one breathe. Take those dark lines, for example. They aren't just outlines; they create movement and define the shapes, but also flatten them, like he's unsure whether he wants the work to be representational or abstract. And that’s the genius of Kandinsky. It’s like he’s saying, "Here’s a world, but it’s also just paint and paper. I'm thinking of Paul Klee, another master of color and line, who also loved to play with the boundary between abstraction and figuration.