No other artist epitomizes the character of the Guggenheim quite like Vasily Kandinsky who has been closely linked to the history of the Guggenheim Museum and has been collected in depth for the museum's permanent collection since its founding. This is the first, full-scale retrospective of Kandinsky's career in the United States since 1985, when the Guggenheim culminated its trio of ground-breaking exhibitions of the artist’s life and work in Munich, Russia, and Paris. This presentation of nearly 100 paintings will bring together works from the three partner institutions which have the greatest concentration of the artist's work in the world, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, and Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, as well as draw significant loans from private and public holdings.

The final iteration of this traveling exhibition will investigate both Kandinsky’s formal and conceptual contributions to the course of abstraction in the 20th century, concentrating on his innovations in painting. Tracing Kandinsky’s vision through thematic motifs, such as the horse and rider, mountainous landscapes, tumultuous seascapes, apocalyptic imagery, and other religious subjects.