1917
oil on canvas
105 õ 134
Êandinsky actively was engaged in creating a theory of art. One of the topics that interested him was colour. The artist studied the interaction of colour and shape. Shape can be most anything but colour cannot exist as a quality independently of the shape of an element.
Kandinsky believed that each colour reveals a certain character of movement. For example, yellow accentuates active movement towards the viewer and corresponds to a triangle. Red reveals only movement inside itself. This is the colour of “inner boiling” and it is perceived in the form of a square. Blue expresses movement away from the viewer, i.e., constitutes a full contrast to yellow and its characteristics harmonise with a circle.
In the painting Troubled there is a dramatic clash between centripetal and centrifugal forces literally destroying one another, which elicits a sensation of anxiety, which grows to the extent they “get accustomed” in this work. The mass of supplemental colours achieve a unique orchestration of the main theme – the fight of two evenly directed forces – one pacifying and the other aggravating it.
