Upward

In this piece, Kandinsky again plays whimsically with geometric forms, similar to his contemporary piece Aufsteig. He was supposed to pen the line, "I do not select shape intentionally, it chooses itself in me," this year. A semicircle that is delicately yet unsteadily placed on the point of a triangle makes up the artwork. It is offset by a thin rectangular strip and a smaller orange segment that, despite being smaller in area, together seem to balance the semicircle flawlessly.

Kandinsky carefully selects his colors for this precise balance, which raises the apparent density of the smaller portion. Its overhanging semicircle restricts and lengthens its upward movement, hence the title. A horizontal line that further bisects the semicircle draws our attention to its central axis, and its tension with the vertical that maintains the balance. By this Kandinsky achieves both a tension and a synthesis in the work. There is also a sense of a human face in this work, the 'heavenly' blue circle and aura depicting the eye and the narrow red rectangle representing a mouth, reminiscent of an earlier work by Paul Klee.

Location: Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy

Style: Geometric Abstraction
Year: 1929