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Departure (Prošcanie) from Verses Without Words (Stichi bez slov)

In the portfolio Stichi bez slov (Verses without words) Vasily Kandinsky leaves the modern world and all its distractions and sails away on Viking ships and down the Rhine to a fairy-tale world filled with gallant mounted riders, elegant ladies, peaceful landscapes, and onion-domed churches. Frustrated with his attempts at writing poetry in German, Kandinsky used these woodcuts to give shape to the nostalgia for his Russian homeland that he found impossible to put into words. As he explained to his companion, painter Gabriele Münter, "I must do them, for I cannot rid myself of my thoughts (or possibly dreams) any other way."

The imagery in these prints was central to the symbolic vocabulary th...

(1903)
Woodcut from a portfolio of twelve woodcuts, one woodcut title page, one woodcut table of contents, one supplementary woodcut and one woodcut colophon
7.7 x 8.2cm
580.1966.10
Image © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
Text © MoMA - Museum of Modern Art, New York

Where you'll find this

The Museum of Modern Art
Permanent collection