Composition VIII
1923 · Guggenheim, New York City
Circles, triangles and floating lines arranged with the precision of a score. Kandinsky painted it while teaching at the Bauhaus, his storms over.
★ 7.2
The Art canon
Sourced and hung.
Every work chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
Violet, Black, Orange, Yellow on White and Red
1949 · Guggenheim, New York City
Soft-edged bands of color stacked one above another, hovering slightly off the surface. Rothko wanted you to stand close and stay a while.
★ 7.1
The Tilled Field
1924 · Guggenheim, New York City
An eye and an ear sprout from a tree and a lizard wears a cap. Miró's Catalan farm has come apart into Surrealism.
★ 6.8
Black Lines
1913 · Guggenheim, New York City
Black skeins and floating patches of color with nothing recognizable in it at all. Kandinsky thought painting could work on you like music.
★ 6.7
Yellow Cow
1911 · Guggenheim, New York City
Marc used yellow for whatever was gentle and joyful, and this cow is kicking its legs out across the hills for the pleasure of it.
★ 6.5
Woman Ironing
1904 · Guggenheim, New York City
The laundress bears down on her iron with her shoulders up and her head sunk, all in the cold blue of Picasso's poorest years.
★ 6.3
Mountains at Saint-Remy
1889 · Guggenheim, New York City
The hills buckle and heave in the same thick strokes he gave his skies, so that the rock ends up moving too.
★ 6.3
Morning in the Village After Snowstorm
1912 · Guggenheim, New York City
Peasants and houses rendered as polished metal cylinders. Malevich was three years away from painting a black square and stopping.
★ 6.1
Paris Through the Window
1913 · Guggenheim, New York City
A train crosses the sky upside down, a man drifts past on a parachute, and the cat on the sill has a human face.
★ 6.1
Woman with Yellow Hair
1931 · Guggenheim, New York City
Marie-Thérèse asleep with her head on her arms, the angular violence of Cubism gone soft and curved for a few years.
★ 6.1
Man with Crossed Arms
1900 · Guggenheim, New York City
Cézanne cared less who the man was than whether the head would hold together as structure, and the slight asymmetries keep it alive.
★ 6.1
Artillerymen (Kirchner)
1915 · Guggenheim, New York City
Naked conscripts showering in a barracks under a mounted officer, painted after the army service that broke Kirchner down.
★ 5.7
The Football Players
1908 · Guggenheim, New York City
Moustached men in striped jerseys leap for a ball among autumn trees, playing the new game of rugby as though it were slow ritual.
★ 5.7
The Hermitage at Pontoise
1867 · Guggenheim, New York City
Plain village houses on a hillside, built in solid earthy blocks. Pissarro refused to prettify the countryside and gave it structural weight instead.
★ 5.4
Woman Before a Mirror
1876 · Guggenheim, New York City
A woman in a white corset seen from behind, painted so loosely the picture seems to stop just before the image settles.
★ 5.2
In the Vanilla Grove, Man and Horse
1891 · Guggenheim, New York City
A man and a white horse in a Tahitian grove, painted on Gauguin's first stay, flat and warm and looking for a paradise.
★ 5.2
Artillerymen (Rousseau)
1893 · Guggenheim, New York City
A regiment posed around its cannon like a group photograph that has gone charmingly rigid. Rousseau was a customs officer painting in his spare time.
★ 4.8
Capricious Forms
1937 · Guggenheim, New York City
The Bauhaus grids and circles have given way to floating amoebas. Kandinsky in Paris at the end, inventing a biology instead.
★ 4.8