"Study for Improvisation 3," Wassily Kandinsky, 1909.

Here's our old pal Kandinsky, in his early Abstract period. Here he was focused more on visually capturing what he termed "the noise of emotion" and while technically abstract you can make out a horse and some human figures.

Experts claim that this is the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse, referred to in the Bible. This was the horseman Death, although he hardly looks funereal with all this color. But the horse is rearing rather than proceeding across what appears to be a white bridge; is the yellow fortress holding it at bay? Is that a blue figure seated to the right? What is its meaning?

Kandinsky had quite a few spiritual ideas but they're hard to fathom in his work. But it's an arresting image, nonetheless. It sold at Christie's for over $16 million in 2008.

From a private collection.

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