About this work
In *Interior (My Dining Room)*, Kandinsky captures the intimate space of a dining room with a vibrant and dynamic palette.
He portrays a corner of the room in two-point perspective, the corner itself thrust toward the viewer and brightened by white light falling from a chandelier and a yellow-green heater.
A central table draped with a red-and-white checkered cloth is surrounded by dishes and utensils; to the right, a small side table holds a bowl of fruit, while a large wooden cabinet adorned with decorative items dominates the background, and two open doorways add depth and intrigue to the composition.
The palette is rich and intense — warm hues of red, orange, and yellow pressed against cooler greens and blues — while deep reddish-pink walls create a vibrant, almost pressurised backdrop.
The patterning of the wallpaper and tablecloth compete for attention, refusing to recede, and the visible, immediate brushstrokes push everything insistently forward.
Painted in 1909 in Munich, the work is oil on cardboard — a modest support measuring 50 × 65 cm — and today resides in the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich. This was a pivotal year for Kandinsky personally and artistically. His companion Gabriele Münter had just bought a summerhouse in Murnau, a small Bavarian town south of Munich, and Kandinsky was deeply embedded in the city's avant-garde scene.
In 1909 he joined the Theosophical Society, and works from this period — including *Blue Mountain* — already demonstrate his accelerating trend toward abstraction.
A fundamental change was taking place in his work: the transition from representational to abstract art. *Interior (My Dining Room)* sits precisely on that threshold — the subject is recognisable, but the simplified shapes and bold colouration of objects like the green dresser and rounded vases seem more concerned with the interaction of colour and line than with accurately portraying reality.
It is unmistakably a work from Kandinsky's early career — evidence of an artist building his technique toward abstraction slowly, beginning with representational and Expressionist paintings before arriving at purely non-objective work.
On the wall, this painting rewards a room that can absorb its emotional intensity — a dining room with warm ambient light, a study with deep-toned walls, or a hallway where the
