The exhibition begins with Kandinsky’s relatively traditional work as a painter during his early years in Munich and leads on to his encounter with Expressionism while traveling in Italy and Paris.

The section that traces Kandinsky’s path to abstraction after his return to Munich is of central importance: during this period he explores the ideas of the Blaue Reiter group and completes his first improvisations and abstract compositions and his most important theoretical writings. Finally the show follows the painter’s 1914 move to Russia, highlighting the development of his colour and form compositions through to his return to Germany in 1921 as a teacher at the Bauhaus in Weimar.
The exhibition consists of around 70 works including paintings and works on paper. It features key works by Kandinsky from the great collections of the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, the Armenian National Gallery in Erewan and museums of the Russian provinces (including Ekaterinburg, Kasan, Krasnodar, Omsk, Tula, Tyumen) which have hardly ever been seen outside Russia. These works are complemented by selected paintings and works on paper from various international public and private collections such as the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag and the Hamburg Kunsthalle.