Vasily Kandinsky “Upward” at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice

Kandinsky, Upward Painting - Oil on Cardboard (70 x 49 cm) October 1929

As in the “White Cross”, everything is suspended, weightlessly, in this painting.

Unlike the “White Cross”, built essentially on diagonals, apart from the character's neck, there are no longer any diagonal.

Everything is perfectly aligned, "set" on horizontal and vertical planes.

Kandinsky uses only "flat" shapes here, and he creates the volume by using the dark light as in the neck or by the parts of circles in the face.

We find Kandinsky's first paintings' chromatic use, which also plays on warm, red, yellow and orange colours that contrast with cold, blue and green colours.

Black is almost exclusively used to divide, emphasize and structure, including the eye.

Kandinsky, Upward