Klänge

The book Klänge was created during a period when Wassily Kandinsky was changing his style and experimenting with form, colour and painterly means. Instead of presenting reality, he emphasised the emotional and inner life. His figurative work therefore became much more abstract. Kandinsky was attempting to create a synthesis of word and music and of word and image. He was primarily interested in the relationship between abstraction and figuration. Kandinsky had musical sounds in mind when he made Klänge, and he was hoping to convey these sounds to the viewer and reader, thereby evoking a similar sensual experience in them. Kandinsky’s search for new means of expression in the visual arts also had repercussions for his writing. He used the possibilities of language in an innovative way. Kandinsky began to create the 56 woodcuts and 38 poems for his book Klänge in 1907, but it was not published until 1912.