Kandinsky: Cossacks

"Cossacks represents a transition in Kandinsky’s work when he was moving towards full abstraction work. As an ‘objective abstraction’, the painting still contains some representational parts, but the expressive arrangement of colours and lines is the most important element of the work. In this work, part of Tate's collection, the representational parts include two Cossacks (Russian cavalrymen) on horseback fighting with sabres at the top left, three more Cossacks bottom right, and a castle on a hill and a party of birds in flight at the top right."