Klänge
1907–12, published 1913
Medium
Book with fifty-six woodcuts, forty-four in black and twelve in color, on cream laid paper
Dimensions
Book, closed: 28.3 × 28.3 × 2 cm (11 3/16 × 11 3/16 × 13/16 in.)
Classification
woodcut
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
44014
Art Historical Context
Vasily Kandinsky’s *Klänge* (“Sounds”) is a landmark artist’s book that captures the Russian painter’s pivotal shift toward abstraction in the years before World War I. Created between 1907 and 1912 and published in Munich in 1913, the volume unites fifty-six woodcuts—forty-four printed in black and twelve in color—with Kandinsky’s own prose poems. The square format and hand-printed woodcuts give the pages a rhythmic, musical quality that reflects the artist’s belief in the spiritual correspondence between sound, color, and form. As a founding member of the Blue Rider group, Kandinsky used *K...